Tohu Bohu

Your Humble Blogger has in the past been on about the Hugo-nominators and voters and the general specfic-chattering classes having a blind spot for works that are marketed to people who are not sf fans. As you may already know, this year’s Hugo went to The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon, a novel that was clearly marketed as literary fiction rather than genre. Mr. Chabon himself seems to be a genre fan; certainly there doesn’t seem to be the hostility there that there is with, say, Margaret Atwood. Anyway, I’m happy enough that the book won, as (a) I think it’s a fine book, and (2) I like the idea that it is fully accepted in the Hugo-voting community as a specfic book within the meaning of the act. I will be curious to see whether HarperCollins pushes the Hugo as a marketing tool; they haven’t yet added it to either the main HarperCollins page or the TYPU page, but that could well be tardiness, as they still have the Locus award-winners up on the main HarperCollins page.

Anyway, Gentle Readers of this Tohu Bohu probably have lots of opportunities to chat with people who know their specfic about the Hugos, or to read the on-line conversations of such people. It was interesting to me to read a thread about the Hugos over at the McCovey Chronicles, a SportsBlogs Nation site for fans of the San Francisco Giants. Not many fans of the specfic novel over there, not many people with any real knowledge of the genre. There seems to be some bewilderment that alternate history of the TYPU kind is eligible for a Hugo at all (to be fair, I believe this is the first time that a straight-ahead alternate history novel has won the Hugo), and it might be interesting to view the confusion over genre definitions from the point of view of people who don’t know much about the genre and don’t care much, either. At least, it has to be as interesting as the same old conversation with the same old people, right?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

So, Gentle Readers know that I think the Hugos and Worldcon should do something to recognize artists (as distinct from illustrators) who work in speculative fiction. Yes? Can I get some agreement on this? Or argument?

Anyway, that idea came back to mind when I was thinking about speculative fiction on stage. There just isn’t much, is there? I mean, leaving aside folk stories and children’s shows (which I have just arbitrarily decided to leave aside), can you think of five sf works? I have been trying, and I’ve come up with Caryl Churchill’s A Number, and the Rocky Horror Show, and the musical of Lord of the Rings. Oh, you could include some of Samuel Beckett’s plays, if you wanted to be a bit of a jerk about it, and sometimes I do (OK, fairly often). Has a play been nominated for the Hugo Dramatic? Not that it would win, what with nobody seeing it and all, but still.

I’d be curious to see what a really good adaptor would do with Never Let Me Go, although of course it would be totally different from the prose work. I suspect it would be one of those things where three characters do monologues, rather than attempt to create scenes and dialogue. Still, it might work. A stage adaptation of “Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’, by Benjamin Rosenbaum” would be a hoot, and would very likely work as theater (with puppets!). I could image a play with some of the conceit of Spin, not an adaptation but a different exploration of some of the ideas.

There are certain aspects of speculative fiction that would be difficult on stage, true. When you think about it, though, it’s just as easy to build a stage set of a Mars colony mine as a Long Island mansion. You don’t have to go outside the dome, just as you don’t have to go outside the house. You do need a set of good characters, with a conflict that can be played out over a short evening.

Think of two plays that were successful recently: Copenhagen and ART. Copenhagen, which I loved, was three characters talking about a scientific breakthrough and the research surrounding it, and how that affected the characters’ relationships to each other as well as a war in which they played a part. It was historical rather than speculative, and that mattered to the play as it was written, which is highly specific and works on that level. Still, there’s no reason to believe a play involving a speculative breakthrough and a future war and the relationships between three characters involved in the research could not work.

ART is about (again) three characters responding to a work of art that one of them purchases, what their reactions to that purchase reveal about them to each other, and how that knowledge changes their relationships. It is set in (more or less) the present, and the work of art belongs to a specific art-historical movement, but other than that, it isn’t hugely specific. A similar play where the characters reacted to something speculative, something that does not now exist might well work. It would be nothing like ART (which I didn’t much like), but there’s no reason to rule it out.

Why doesn’t more specfic theater exist? It doesn’t seem to me that it’s because of a stodgy theater-going crowd. There’s a tremendous amount of irreal (or “irreal”) stuff being put on all the time, and there is clearly a tremendous appetite for it. It’s not because of a lack of interest in speculative fiction in the wider culture. Most of the popular movies and television shows are specfic. So I’m guessing that there’s an unsurprising reluctance among playwrights, producers and audiences to see something that is labeled SF. Matthew Cheney, in his review of A Number says that in the theatre world there are only such things as plays, and nobody much bothers worrying about what to call them or their writers. (How odd it would be to hear someone describe Churchill, or anyone else, as “the famous sci-fi playwright”!) Well, true in a way. But it’s also true that there are no famous sci-fi playwrights, Ms. Churchill notwithstanding.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

So. Your Humble Blogger read Perdido Street Station before this Tohu Bohu became 30% books, so Gentle Readers might not be aware that I did not like it. Didn’t. Sorry. Nuh-unh. It was very obviously the sort of book I would like, without being any actual book I do like. I don’t even remember why, specifically, other than that it seemed to be mostly noodling. So when I heard that China Miéville had written a YA book, I was only mildly interested. Un Lun Dun fell into my wicked hands, however, and I thought what the heck, anyway.

And it turns out that it is wonderful. Wait, let me say it again, in italics: Un Lun Dun is wonderful.

Part of the wonderfulnessosity is just the fun, the New Weird craziness, the grotesques and puns, the moil and the umbrellas and the unbrellas and the rebrellas. But part of it is that Mr. Miéville agrees with Your Humble Blogger. Hurrah! All the things that get up my nose about Young Adult specfic get up his nose, and he not only turns the tables on them and then mocks them just enough, but he makes the story work without them! There’s a chosen one, and she’s a big loser, and she doesn’t fulfill the quest, but somebody else does, so it’s OK! Our hero chooses herself, which makes her far more of a hero. There are prophecies, and they are wrong, or at least some of them are wrong, and there’s no real way of knowing which ones. There’s a Quest! And the Quest! has several parts, and the Quest! has to be done in the proper order, and our heroine looks at the Quest! and says screw that and jumps to the end. Hee hee! Take that, Fate! Take that, annoying tropes of my favorite fiction! Take that, and that! And one more! And that’s all, you can’t have any more.

Anyway.

The point is not just that Mr. Miéville agrees with all right-thinking people such as YHB that fantasy novels are bizarrely and fawningly approving of such evil and destructive traditions as hereditary monarchy, the primacy of genetic traits and the authority of prophecy, no. The point is that he has made a very good story without approving of that shit, and thus not only proving it can be done but (I hope) forcing many people who do write fantasy to come to terms with the fact that they have been approving that shit, and that they can write very good stories without it.

I’m hoping to read a bunch of stuff inspired by that—not by the New Weird, which is fine and all, but has been around for a while, but by the radical left-wing idea that the hero doesn’t have to be a fucking prince. Got it? Good.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Whenever I reread Dune, I am surprised by how much happens before Paul becomes the all-knowing and all-powerful and not-very-interesting fulfillment of prophecy. There’s a lot of book before he even gets to Dune, for one thing, and then there’s a fair amount of book before the Baron strikes, and then there’s some more book before he gets to the Fremen, and a little more book yet before he gets to the sietch. Yes, during this time he’s acquiring ultimate power and knowledge, but he doesn’t have it yet, so there’s still some interest in how he’s going to get out of the various plot problems.

You’d think that eventually, YHB would remember what the book is actually like. No. A month or so after reading it, I’m convinced that it’s the prime example of how bad an overwhelmingly powerful hero is for a book. Which in some ways it is, although since it takes several hundred pages to get to that point, there are undoubtedly far better examples.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An odd thing about blogging everything I read is that I find the blogging seeps into the reading. I read the book knowing that I’m going to be blogging the book, and in the back of my mind, often enough, is the question what am I going to say about this book? This question moves closer to the front of my mind if I’ve read the book before, particularly if I’ve read it several times, which we all know happens a lot. Oh, it’s not a terrible thing, and of course I reserve the right to just say I’ve read the book and move on. But it’s there, and it affects my experience.

So. I was in a foul mood at some point fairly recently and picked up Cold Comfort Farm in an attempt to cheer myself up. A successful attempt. Much cheerfulness resulted. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book.

Here’s what I was thinking I might write to the blog, though, as I went through it this time: why did Stella Gibbons make this book specfic? It’s written in the early thirties (and/or the late twenties) and set in the mid-fifties, as far as I can tell. After the 1948 Anglo-Nicaraguan War, anyway. There is no particular point to it, other than throwing in a few jokes about visiphones and air taxis. I suppose there’s a joke in the idea that Sussex farm life, already a relic of an earlier time, will be essentially unchanged a couple of decades hence. Mostly, though, it just seems odd. You could leave out every indication that it’s set in what was then the near-future without harming any part of the rest of the novel, and in fact the magnificent film version does so. So did Ms. Gibbons put the specfic stuff in as a E.M. Forster reference? Or just a general joke on futurism in the sorts of writing she was mocking? Or what?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was given The Confessions of Max Tivoli by my Best Reader, who was under the impression that it was one of those specfic-marketed-as-mainstream books like The Time-Traveler’s Wife which I liked so much. It turns out not to be. It does have something in common with that book, a romance between a caddish man and an clever and interesting woman, where the man is unstuck in time in a particular way that dooms the romance. In the Wife, the man is actually unstuck in time. In Tivoli, the fellow ages backward. Just by appearances, actually; at the age of ten he looks like a little old man, then his appearance sheds years until at sixty-five or so he looks like a ten-year old. His memory works the normal way, and the biological changes don’t appear to have much affect on his character.

Anyway, I was disappointed by the lack of any actual speculative element in the book, and I was also disappointed a bit because it’s set in San Francisco, a city much like Heaven, in the period from 1880 or so until 1930 or so, a period that is absolutely fascinating, and it doesn’t really do much with those settings. I mean, the settings are there, and they provide some color to the book, but mostly the book is a meditation about love and age and beauty and so on. The author, Andrew Sean Greer is not very interested in world events. When Max Tivoli goes to Europe to fight in the Great War, a man in his forties among boys in their teens, and Mr. Greer mentions it only in passing. The Great Earthquake of 1906 similarly happens just off-screen. Max Tivoli does not engage in any of the intellectual, artistic or literary movements of the time. He just moons over the lady.

That’s too harsh. Particularly because mooning over the lady is poignant, affecting, even occasionally uplifting (although mostly not). With all the mooning over the lady, there’s a lot about the nature of love, and desire, and with the whole living-backwards business, there’s a lot about the nature of beauty. And as Max ages, his beloved sees him first as a father-figure, then as a lover, than as a child to be mothered (she doesn’t know it’s him each time, of course). It looks at her love, and the way he receives it or can’t receive it, in those terms, and that’s interesting as well. Still. If it’s unfair to criticize a book for not being the book I wanted, it’s unfair for the book not to be the book I wanted, isn’t it?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I must have been in high school when I first read Terra!, by Stefano Benni, and thought it was the Greatest. Thing. Evar. Well, we didn’t say Greatest. Thing. Evar. in those days. It was before the Simpson. Yes, yes, before the Simpsons. Imagine that. Anyway, I think the book suited the mid-eighties and my teens particularly well, it’s post-nuclear hijinks making me feel daring and superior, as if I saw through enough of society’s ills to appreciate this wild work, unlike the drooling yahoos circumjacent. So there’s that.

It turns out, though, that it’s a fairly good book. It’s not great, and in particular he doesn’t have any way of making the plot-wrapping-up bit readable, but there it is. There are a lot of good jokes and a few great jokes. Mr. Benni interrupts the plot every now and then to have one of his characters tell a story, and the stories are generally wonderful. We visit half-a-dozen marvelous places, from the glittering double-spaceship of the Amerussian Shieks to the Snakeman’s junkpit asteroid. The language (it’s translated by Annapaola Cancogni) is wild and irregular, and there are a handful of places where the English is clumsy or false, but on the whole, it’s a fun ride.

And, of course, one of the fun things about reading specfic from the mid-eighties is seeing how much our fears about the future have shifted. Mr. Benni was riffing off our fears of nuclear winter, corporate takeover of government functions, street violence and oil dependence. He uses the images of Japanese technical superiority and penchant for miniaturization that were prevalent at the time, and the images of obscenely wealthy Arab oilmen who really run the world that were prevalent at the time, and the images of the nobility of rejecting technology that were prevalent at the time. And it’s fun to see which images are still prevalent.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, if it’s OK with y’all, Gentle Readers, I’m just going to fling at you a bunch of things I thought were interesting to post about, but which I haven’t actually written a post about:

• There are some interesting things over at Matthew Yglesias’s’’ses proudly eponymous site about the War Powers Act. I am becoming even more entrenched in my belief that the War Powers Act, for all that it was intended to limit the power of the Executive to engage in undeclared wars, in fact hands the war power to the Executive to use at the whim of whoever happens to be President. We should repeal it and start again, ideally with an incredibly restrictive law that makes it clear that the war power belongs solely to the Legislatures, and that the President must not invade any other sovereign nation without a proper declaration of war. I know, I know, as Commander in Chief, the President has to respond quickly and whatnot. No, he doesn’t. There is no reason why the President should be able to invade without first getting a declaration of war. He can command our military within our borders and within the borders of our allies and generally play defense by himself, great. If we have an invitation from a sovereign government (an officially recognized sovereign government) to bring in peace-keeping troops and military advisors, well, we can work something out in a bill to allow for retroactive permission, but pretty quick. Not three months, or two, or one. Is our national transportation system so bad that we can’t convene a special session to deal with a crisis?
• Robert Gallucci makes a terrific point in a short interview with Foreign Policy when he says “this theory that Bolton apparently operates on, that we’re in a situation where we have to worry about rewarding people or not rewarding people is not a useful construct for international relations. It’s probably not bad if you’re trying to teach your kids about the playground, but [it doesn’t work] for international politics.” I have a sense that Our Only President and his cabal of incompetents and crooks somehow think of non-westerners and not-quite-grupp, and that they have to be Taught Lessons. I think there is a question of maturity, but I don’t think the point of that question is away from the White House.
• I’m not all the way through it, but I can already recommend Mary Robinette Kowal’s series of posts about reading aloud. There is a lot of stuff there that is just technical enough to be actually useful.
• I understand that the point of a recommended reading list is to, you know, recommend books that I have not actually read before, but I was surprised to see how little of Locus magazine’s recommended stuff from 2006 I had read. Or, frankly, am interested in reading. I believe I have only read one of the grupp novels and one of the first novels, and none of the YA books. I have read some good things from 2006, haven’t I? Or have I? It was interesting to see Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon and James Morrow on the list—I usually complain about books that are clearly speculative being kept out of talk about specfic, but in the case of The Last Witchfinder I am skeptical about its place on the list at all.
• From Zadie Smith on Litchrachoor in The Guardian January 13th, an essay called “Fail Better”: “[G]reat writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.” The essay appears to have disappeared from The Guardian’s site, but it has been cached for those who are interested and have mad skillz. Mostly, though, I just liked the description there.
• There have been a lot of notes in Left Blogovia about the various candidates’ positions on Iran, and whether they should take military strikes off the table. Just to be clear, if Larry King or the buffoon Chris Matthews asks you about military strikes, you say “They would be a mistake.” If he asks if that means that they are off the table, you say “They would be a mistake.” If he persists, and insists that he must know if they are off the table, ask him “what table? I’m talking about foreign policy and the possibility of a tragic and unnecessary war; what are you talking about?” If you become President and circumstances compel you, in your judgement, to order military strikes, you will have the power to do so (with the prior approval of the Legislature, yes?) whether they were on the table or not.
• Travis Daub mentions a six-year old interview with Lori Wallach, during which she used her line about “two ships passing in the night. One ship is loaded with chopsticks cut from wood in the Pacific Northwest and being shipped to Japan. The other ship is loaded with toothpicks cut from trees in Malaysia and packaged in Japan on their way to California.” Mr. Daub is reminded of this by the news that “Producing and shipping one bottle of Fiji bottled water around the globe consumes nearly 27 liters of water, nearly a kilogram of fossil fuels, and generates more than a pound of carbon dioxide emissions.” Mmmm, water.
• Remember the Maine!

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven’t been in for years, but evidently Pandemonium is finding money tight after their Big Move down to Central. My own experience with them is primarily going in on my lunch hour when I have neglected to provide myself with etwas zu lesen and picking up a trashy used paperback for a buck. It was excellent for that purpose. Had I been blogging books at the time, y’all would have heard about it. I often wish, these non-Cantabridgian days, that I had such a local place. I don’t know that they made any large quantity of money off me, as I rarely purchased any books or games new. Now that I think about it, I did, on occasion, buy the odd Dork Tower collection or Fluxx deck. Anyway, I was a regular, within the meaning of the act, and am no longer a regular due only to being far away. Even then, when in Greater Boston, I would often try to make my way to Harvard Square for one thing and another, and one of those things would generally be a visit to Pandemonium. Now, however, I will have to actually remember to head to Central, which, you know, I might do (Pearl and 1369 and 10,000 Villages and not terribly far from the ess and ess).

Anyway, what YHB was going to say is that this Tohu Bohu is happy to endorse Pandemonium, and without compensation, either. If you are in the market for what they sell, and are in the general neighborhood, I recommend you drop by and see what they are up to. What do they sell? Books, specfic mostly with some comics, and games, role-playing mostly with some scattered Other Stuff. Cheapass games, collectible card games, that sort of thing. For me, the key thing was the wide selection of cheap, crappy secondhand paperbacks. It was like ... you know what it was like? It was like going over to a friend’s house and rummaging through their shelves. Yes, I did have to actually pay a dollar or so for the book, but it really felt more like that than like a commercial transaction.

Yes, the staff was knowledgeable, probably far too knowledgeable, in that they had opinions, which meant that some of the things they recommended were Not To My Taste. Which is, fine, you know, as people are different, one to another, but still. Oh, and although I wouldn’t describe the place as a hangout for con-going types, there was generally somebody in there in the sort of half-costume street-clothes that scream of desparate nerdosity, trying to have a neverending conversation about some esoteric RPG something or other with the clerk who doesn’t want to offend the poor human-without-social-skills but who is nonetheless aware that there is somebody at the counter who wants to give the store his money and then leave. I am old. I don’t enjoy that part of the atmosphere all that much anymore.

On the other hand, I am very happy about the money I have given them, and what I got in return. So. An endorsement.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It turns out, and this is a surprise to Your Humble Blogger, that at least a dozen novels have been Reported in this Tohu Bohu that, if YHB understands the rules correctly, were eligible for the Hugo. One of them has been nominated, or rather has become a Nominee, which isn’t quite the same thing, but better.

Anyway, I might possible read one or another of the other nominated novels before the end of the summer (although I really doubt I will read Charles Stross’ss’s book, since I read one and didn’t much like it, and read the acclaimed short story that I understand is the nut of the book, and didn’t much like it), and if so I will change my views accordingly. But I must say, at this point, I am a trifle shocked, just a bit more than surprised, by the list. I mean, of the ones I’ve read, I would not have guessed that OMW would be the one nominated, either on its merits or on the politics.

What was YHB’s favorite of them? Hmm. Honestly, I’m inclined to put Night Train to Rigel at the top of the list. I don’t know. I couldn’t say I enjoyed that one much more than OMW or Effendi. Wait a minute, I forgot one, I’m changing my tune. My favorite specfic book of 2005 (of the ones I actually read) was Magic Street. Which was pretty good, actually. Better than Anansi Boys, certainly, although I was surprised to see that one left off the final ballot. Oh, and a question: was Die Haarteppichknüpfer ineligible for the Hugo because it was a translation, and had been published earlier in its original language? That doesn’t seem fair. And was it eligible in the year it was published in German and then again when it was published in English? That doesn’t seem fair, either. Not that I liked it that much, anyway.

Oh, and here’s another question: why isn’t there a Hugo for best work aimed at the juvenile/YA market? I mean, I know that there isn’t any really good definition of that, and there would be all kinds of agita about qualifications, etc, etc, but there are loads of YA specfic books coming out every year, and although most of them are crap, so are most of the specfic novels for grupps, and the best of them are easily as good (imao) as the best of the books for grupps. Is it that somebody thinks that most Hugo voters don’t read YA novels? But then why have them vote on short stories?

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Edited to add: as of May 2006, my vote for Best Specfic Novel of 2005 is Never Let Me Go, with Magic Street falling back to a very distant second.

Posted by Vardibidian at 7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)