Updates! Opinions! Tomfoolery!

1) My second (and apparently more controversial) column went up on SFSignal on Thursday. I am a bad blogger. . . .

2) My new Apex column went live yesterday. Very reflective. I really need to do a review roundup soon so that I can say more about Dark Faith and why, despite the unevenness of the stories in it, I found it to be a stimulating read.

3) The discussion topic in fantastika right now appears to be whether the term "speculative fiction" is useful or not. It started on the Coode Street podcast and has been discussed by Cheryl Morgan and now (with more depth and a pile of comments, including a few from me) by Cat Valente. I come down, unsurprisingly, on the "side" of fantastika as an umbrella term. "Spec fic" and "speculative fiction" are terms that I have used sometimes in the past, but I have abandoned them for either my preferred umbrella term or for something more specific. As I said on Cat's blog, genres are imperfect representations and subject to contestation. I wonder if it's worth writing a column about this?

4) I am reading and writing a lot. In addition to the columns I am working on two stories at the moment, and once February comes I am going to get back into the novel. Can't wait to start getting rejection slips.

Writing and Thinking

It's a bit late to announce here, but I am happy to proclaim that my first SFSignal column is up! It's been well-received and I have gotten some good comments on it. After chatting and exchanging ideas with people I would like to expand it in the future, especially regarding how expectation and structure of narrative work together in the production of a story. One friend's comment on the exaggerated Manicheanism within epic fantasy also has me wondering about the moral components of the literature.

I am working on the next column, which is about the rise of the anti-epic and other shifts in the literary terrain like the creation of the "urbanfantasy/paranormal romance" black hole). I feel very inspired by the move to a larger venue and I am working harder on the columns than I did before. Also, Ekaterina Sedia recently posted a strong analysis of the problem of exoticizing language in fantastika that has me thinking about language and expectations in fantastic literature. So much to think and write about! I just need to watch my time and not lose out on fiction writing.

Some Thoughts on a Unicorn Apocalypse

Theodora Goss discussed the utility of writing exercises over at her blog yesterday, and I found one of her ideas particularly fascinating, that of (following Holly Black) a unicorn apocalypse. While I have never been a great lover of the unicorn, it is a creature rich with symbolism and weirdness. And the act of imagining how these creatures might be the destroyers of civilization, rather than purveyors of glitter and happiness, was too good a challenge to pass up.

I decided to go with the Rule of Three and just discard my first two ideas, which were unicorns as secret harbingers of a worse apocalypse, and unicorns as a warning from Mother Nature about ecological imbalance. My third thought was encapsulated in a comment I posted on Theodora's blog:

"The first title to come to mind was ENDLESS RAINBOWS ON A CLOUDLESS, EVER-LASTING DAY. The first line I thought of was 'On the fifth day, Ellis died, most likely from an overload of rainbows. We decided to go to the lake and give him to the narwhals, hoping to placate them and, perhaps, their earth-walking cousins. No other sacrifice had yet helped to stave them off, or bring any measure of blessed darkness back to the world.' I like the idea of the world itself being transformed by this apocalypse."

After a bit of poking around on Google (between pricing outrageously rare poetry chapbooks), I realized that this was ludicrous; there is NO WAY there would ever be narwhals in Cayuga Lake, even in the event of a unicorn apocalypse. Besides, narwhals are actual animals, and only very pale stand-ins for the unicorn, which here is the harbinger of destruction and remaker of the world. And not in a "back-to-nature" way, but in a "we're tired of being pushed around and made into cute notebook covers" kind of way. The entire way the world works must go, decree the unicorns, and the apocalypse arises from there.

The blend of classical traits and tropes with the current softening of unicorn symbolism seemed like an enjoyable path to take. Unicorns are detectors of virtue, instant healers, and savage fighters. They are hard to kill, not just because of their swiftness, but because, as Holly Black points out, their death shakes the universe. I decided that this was literally true, and what makes the unicorn apocalypse even harder to deal with is that a unicorn's death wreaks earth-shaking havoc around it. Sorry humans, killing them literally does more harm than good.

This remaking of the world, on the surface, might sound compelling or even pleasing. As the unicorns emerge in strength from haunted woods, unknown canyons, and the other hidden places of the world, they spread sunshine and rainbows, flowers and blue skies. But quickly people realize that these new conditions are permanent; the skies are cloudless, it never rains, and it never gets dark. The new flowers act like hyperactive weeds and choke all native foliage out of an area, creating endless carpets of cheerful wildflowers that sink their roots into the earth and climb anything they can't choke into oblivion. They thrive in the everlasting sun, but are sadly inedible to all except the unicorns. Monstrous rainbows appear in the skies, hypnotic and maddening in their omnipresence and unfounded joy. The land masses turn into vast unicorn playgrounds where humans (and indeed, most animals except for the chirpiest of birds and most pleasantly buzzing bee sand dragonflies) can no longer thrive.

Initially human governments try to use coercion, and then force, to deal with the unicorns. But once the first few are successfully killed, the effects of their demise obviously far exceed what little benefit is gained from eliminating one. Some humans go to sea, hoping to avoid this bright, shiny horror of a world. Others retreat to extreme climates such as mountaintops and deserts. A few just lay down in the endless fields of flowers and wait to become fertilizer. Others attempt to figure out a way to fight back, until one day, a young woman asks an odd question: what if fighting them is not the answer?

That's as far as I have gotten.

EDIT: Here is Theodora's take on the unicorn apocalypse. I'll happily link to others as they appear.

EDIT THE SECOND: This was quite helpful as a loosening-up exercise! I wrote about 250 more words on a story and polished up a complete story (cut about 200 words from it, slightly altered the characters' main interaction). I'm debating whether the latter is ready to send somewhere.

The Idea Train and the Alluring Countryside

Work was slow this evening, and I had ample time to think about writing and life as I priced a seemingly endless pile of books. I got several ideas for stories and solved an impasse I had in one that I am trying to complete right now. The idea train was chugging along, which was nice, but then I turned to some practical considerations, such as timetables for writing, noting to myself that, during Nanowrimo I had done a decent job of putting words on the screen, but since the end of that exercise my fiction writing had slowed down. The stories I've been working on have not flowed as well as the initial novel-writing had in November.

I started thinking about why this was so. It was partly due to illness (myself and the kidlet both has stomach bugs, and she got a second one), and partly due to the season. There was more to it than that, though; my work habits had not slipped, but I was much less productive with the short fiction in the time that I wrote. One problem? The gods-cursed internet!

It came to me a little while later, as I noted to someone earlier this evening, that when I am writing non-fiction, the internet is both more necessary for research and sourcing, and less of a distraction. When I am writing fiction, however, it is hugely diverting, like losing yourself watching the endless countryside roll by. The idea train barreled along with no problem, but when it came to settling in with the idea, distraction was a given. At the time, I wasn't sure why I had thought of that, or why that might be the case, but as I pondered this conundrum on the way home from work, some ideas came to mind.

Non-fiction is relational, links much more to external matters, and does not come from deep inside me, unless it is some sort of memoir. And non-fiction is easy for me; after years in academia I can formulate arguments, outline papers in my head, calculate paragraph proportions, and put the puzzle pieces into place quickly. I can theorize, criticize, and analyze adeptly. But fiction is more creative, comes from inside, and is more contingent on a combination of confidence and interior generation of material and structure. Fiction is more personal, comes more completely from me, and having not written much of it in the last decade, I am both getting back into the groove and rediscovering my voice now, unearthing ideas and meanings and connections that are dependent on me much more intensely than a piece of criticism.

And my confidence in that process is rather shaky.

When I feel particularly distracted I usually get off the main laptop and pull out another machine to write upon (longhand is not really an option, given my horrid handwriting and the speed at which I write) that is not connected to the internet. That helps sometimes. But what I need to cultivate more is confidence and a sense of groundedness in my creativity. Nothing in my life has done more to keep me sane and happy than writing, and more than ever I am committed to writing as much as I can, to get published, and to live the life of a writer as fully as possible. It is easy to lose that anchorage when you're careening down the tracks and there are so many interesting things outside your window. It is easier to watch the world go by. But that is not the point of the ride.

A Few End-of-Year Thoughts

With the closing of the calendar year comes many things. First, my final Forces of Geek column. After over 18 months in residence, it was time to move on. I really enjoyed writing the column, and I think I wrote some good ones (and a few, well, OK ones), but I felt a bit like the oddling out there, sandwiched between TV show discussions and viral videos. I am very appreciative for Stefan's support, however, because the column got me back into writing.

It was the confidence I gained from writing that column that made me take up Jason Sizemore's invitation to write for the Apex Book Company blog, where I had the, ahem, honor of writing the the Christmas Day entry this year. A totally random honor, you understand, but it made me think about celebrations, stories, and endings. I tend towards the dark and critical perspective on some things, and I tried to write something a bit brighter, but still smart. It was a bit of a challenge and a lot of fun to write.

And now I am moving on to something bigger, in three senses. First, I will soon be the newest columnist for a website that is much more my cup of tea than FoG. It should be set up by the New Year, and I am extremely excited to be writing for these folks. Second, I am at the critical point in writing my novel, just over the 50K mark, and I have had an avalanche of ideas come crashing down on my head, and I am currently digging my way out of the pile and figuring out how to put all of this material together in a strong narrative edifice. Third, I will have two stories ready to send out after the first of the year, perhaps three if I can get past my thinking that it's "not my kind of story."

I am writing more, and more seriously, now than ever. It is so gratifying to be doing the work, even if I still need to work on consistency and discipline a bit more. For the folks who read this wee blog, and my work, and for the support and comments you have sent my way, thanks. 2010 was difficult, but productive, and I look forward to 2011 being much better in every way.

Since Everyone Else is Doing a Fraggin' Top Ten List. . .

. . . allow me to jump onto the bandwagon!

I've been meaning to do some reviews for a bit, but NaNoWriMo and illness delayed them. So, I can banish two daemons with one incantation via a Top Ten List. These are the ten creative works (not all released in 2010) that I most enjoyed and admired this year.

The List, in no particular order:

---The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: A rich and provocative book that takes the fantasy tale and brings out new features for us to marvel at. I love the world-building and the care with which Jemisin put this book together. It is wonderfully written, enjoyable, and thoughtful all at the same time. I am looking forward to The Broken Kingdoms, which I just received, to see what happens next.

---Blood of Ambrose/This Crooked Way: I discovered James Enge through his story in the Swords & Dark Magic anthology, and I am so glad that I did. His work has rekindled my love for sword & sorcery through its combination of vigorous action, depth of character, and crisp prose. People who call his prose "slick" are missing some of its deeper pleasures, such as his economy of description, his deft characterizations, and a cavalcade of fascinating ideas that are woven together unassumingly into a cultural fabric that makes his work both warm and visceral. He takes the basic heroic mode of sword & sorcery and expands upon it even as he plays with it. His books have a classical heft to them, but are neither stiff nor dated. He refreshes the genre by taking old roads and then suddenly going off into the misty woods beyond, making new paths that wind in and out of our expectations. Really top-notch stuff!

---Haunted Legends (Tor, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas): This is the best anthology of the year in my book. It is a collection of literate, evocative, well-crafted stories; even the few stories that did not appeal to me were well-done, just not my cup of oolong. What makes this collection so great is that many of the stories are not what you would expect; this is not a compendium of spooky ghost stories or tales of bloodcurdling horror. Most anthologies have a thematic that you expect will be directly reflected in the story. In this anthology, the theme is far more inspirational than that, and is taken in many different directions by the contributors.

The great pleasure of this anthology is that you find so much that is unexpected; stories that are not just about spooky monsters or strange folklore but about people, about regret and loss and wonder expressed and explained through parables and yarns of the unconventional and the painful. In many of these stories legends integrate anguish, the unnerving, and the inexplicable into our lives. Our trespasses against each other and the world, or those of others, becomes the stuff of chagrined, sad tales. Our feelings of suffering and powerlessness are explained by forces outside our control: our loneliness both revealed and, sometimes, combated by strange fables that integrate the cryptic and peculiar aspects of the world around us into something culturally manageable and socially connective.

---Agents of Atlas/Agents of Atlas: Turf Wars/Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign: These three volumes contain some of the best comics I have read in a decade. Writer Jeff Parker takes a group of forgotten characters and makes something fresh and lively out of reuniting them to help their erstwhile leader become reborn and deal with a family legacy that would make the Corleones flee in terror. It's consistently quirky, almost campy at times, but leavened with fast pacing, delightful twists, and genuinely likable characters. Comic-book soap opera is left by the wayside, as are most of the more tired cliches of the superhero genre. Parker instead goes for smart, punchy stories mixed with intrigue and humor. Leonard Kirk, Gabriel Hardman, and Carlo Pagulayan all do excellent work on the art, although Kirk is my favorite artist for the Agents.

---Farthing: Jo Walton is a treasure. She writes great books and perceptive criticism, and her love and critical appreciation for speculative fiction comes through in all of her writing. Farthing demonstrates this in a curious way: by reproducing an entirely different genre (the English country-house mystery) packed with speculative twists that are so well blended into the narrative that you feel transported into that other world. Her deep understanding of the genre comes out in the careful crafting of this novel, which is note-perfect in tone and consistently subversive. I don't like mysteries, but this book is much, much more than "just a mystery." It is an astute, engrossing novel that makes you think hard about what we take for granted.

---Who Fears Death: Nnedi Okorafor's book was a revelation for me, in ways that I am still pondering. As I wrote in one of my FoG columns, the book "mingles destiny, brutality, and liminality in the story of a young woman's coming-of-age in a harsh, dystopian future. Despite a few missteps, the book is 'without preachiness or didactic overkill,' and demonstrates both Okorafor's gift for storytelling and her ability to create deeply grounded stories out of folkloric traditions and speculative insights." It is a very hard book to read sometimes, challenging and discomforting, but consistently engaging and often poetic.

--- Wizardry & Wild Romance: This is a re-issue of Moorcock's extended ruminations on the history and state of epic fantasy. As I said in another review "Moorcock employs detailed discussions of older, sometimes obscure works and weaves them into larger literary trends and literary-historical forces to produce a critique of fantastic literature and its niche in Western cultures. Moorcock's analysis is fun to read and persuasive, and made even a devoted Tolkien fanboy like me start to question what I find so compelling about his work. What this book does best is get under the skin of both individual works and broader ideas and engage the conundrums contained within them. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, Moorcock makes a compelling case for viewing fantasy critically and productively that will help you read the genre with discernment and inquisitiveness." I am still chewing over this book, and will for some time.

---Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, And Society in Saga Iceland: This book is simply fascinating. William Ian Miller takes the sagas and legal codes of old Iceland and performs a stunning act of legal and anthropological interpretation on them. He teases out assumptions, inconsistencies, and deeper meanings in both story and conduct and outlines the interrelations between law, culture, and myth. It is an intelligent analysis that is also a joy to read, and that spends most of its time on the source material instead of theory. I learned a lot from this book that I am applying to some of my fiction.

--- Apex Magazine, Issue #18: This was the Arab/Muslim issue that came out in November, and Cat Valente did a stellar job of assembling and editing this issue. The three short stories were wonderful, and the implicit themes of identity and authority heightened the intensity of the works. The poetry was gorgeous and evocative, and the inclusion of a Turkish fairy tale rounded out the offerings and gave the issue a definitive continuity and context. Certainly the best single-issue periodical I read this year.

2010 was a good year for reading, personally. I read much more than I have in several years, and I feel that I read a lot of good work. Best of all, I found a lot of inspiration in what I read; not just ideas, but creative energy as well. I'm looking forward to tackling my big stack of To-Be-Reads in 2011.

An Assortment of Merriments, Confabulations, Imagos, &co.

1) Been poleaxed by a stomach bug for most of the week. Today is the first full day of a regular food menu and normal functioning. Still rather drained, but pretty much back up to speed.

2) I have not had a drop of coffee since Tuesday. I think that some of the feeling unenergized (and feeling down as well) may come from a level of caffeine withdrawal. Not sure if I will try this out a little longer or not. Coffee has some cultural and symbolic significance for me, I've found. It's hard to not want to pick it back up again.

3) Books obtained in the past week:

The Alteration is going into my reading queue right away. It just sounds far too naughty and odd to miss.

4) As a result, not much writing. I re-read the first half of the novel draft last night, and made a few notes (and got some good advice from Will Shetterly and my friend Judd about it). Tonight I am wiped from a super-busy day at work and I think I will crawl off to finish James Enges' excellent This Crooked Way. I was a bit trepidatious about the book at the start, especially when he used a bit of slang that shattered the suspension of disbelief for me, but it's full of fascinating ideas and driven by a solid story.

5) Want a bit more excitement? Go over to Blake Charlton's website and witness his snarkfest with Sam Sykes. 'Sfunny.