Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 133

The Hobbit vs. The Goblins

We saw The Hobbit on New Year’s Day, and overall, I enjoyed it. It did feel occasionally bloated, but there were other additions I appreciated and enjoyed. “Riddles in the Dark” was, as many have said already, one of the best parts of the film. While I don’t think it was as strong as Lord of the Rings, that would be a pretty high bar to reach.

That said, the movie did have some problems. I have no taste for fat jokes, which felt like pretty much all they did with the character of Bombur. The stone giants seemed completely random and unnecessary to the story. But my biggest complaint, which will probably come as no surprise, was the way the story treated the goblins.

In Lord of the Rings, our heroes slaughtered an awful lot of orcs. Orcs were the stormtroopers of Middle Earth, generic villains who could be killed with little to no remorse, because they’re all Evil. On the other hand, Lord of the Rings took place in a time of war. The orcs we saw were generally soldiers sent out to hunt and kill humans and other races. The Uruk-hai were specifically created to be evil killing machines.

[image error]But then we get to The Hobbit. The dwarves take shelter in a cave, and find themselves tumbling into the goblin kingdom under the mountain. They’re taken prisoner and brought to the goblin king, and oversized and grotesque creature. The dwarves, with Gandalf’s help, eventually break free and fight their way out. In the process, they pretty much Kill All The Goblins.

This scene drags on and on. Goblins are smashed with rocks, stabbed with swords, chopped with axes, knocked into the abyss, and generally massacred left and right.

As a mental exercise, how do you think a party of goblins would have been treated had they stumbled into a dwarf kingdom? They’d have been taken prisoner, hauled in front of the authorities, and probably sentenced to death for the crime of being goblins. How is what the goblins did any different? Yet we’re supposed to sympathize and cheer as the heroes kill every goblin they come across?

Exercise the second: remember toward the beginning of the movie, when they’re talking about how most of these dwarves aren’t really warriors? Yet they killed all of those goblins without a single casualty. What does that tell you about the goblins they were fighting? Those goblins weren’t trained or experienced fighters. They couldn’t have been. Most of them were probably just minding their own business and got caught up in the chaos.

Yeah, I have a soft spot for goblins, but this was just thoughtless storytelling. It felt almost pornographic in a way. Instead of Debbie Does Dallas, we get Gandalf Guts Goblins.

I can appreciate a good fight scene. This wasn’t one. This was empty hack and slash, and I want better.

Reading my Very First Story, IN COSTUME, for Jay Lake

Most of you know the background. Author Jay Lake has been fighting colon cancer for four years, and he’s running out of treatment options. Catherine Shaffer and Mary Robinette Kowal put together a fundraiser to try to pay for whole genome sequencing for Jay, which might suggest other ways of attacking the cancer. They rallied various people from the SF/F community to perform various “acts of whimsy” as rewards for meeting fundraising goals.

I volunteered to read excerpts from the very first story I ever wrote, a 50,000 word piece of Dungeons & Dragons-inspired sword & sorcery, starring Nakor the Purple, a character I totally-didn’t-rip-off-from-Raymond-Feist. Not only that, but I would read this IN COSTUME as Nakor. You see, back in college, our D&D group put together Halloween costumes of our characters, and it was awesome. Because that’s how we rolled back in 1995.

Sadly, I no longer have the prosthetic elf ears, and I couldn’t get the sword to stay on when I sat down to read. I also think I looked better in this costume back when I had long hair. But ah well–any excuse to wear a cloak!

I won’t lie to you. The story is pretty bad. I’m tempted to make a drinking game. “For every unnecessary adverb, take a drink. Every time a character raises an eyebrow, take a drink. Every time the villains sit around waiting for the heroes to do something, take a drink.”

The first time I went to record, our dog Casey heroically tried to save you from having to watch. And then, after waiting three hours for the video to upload,  YouTube deleted it because I had a setting configured wrong. But as you know, you can’t stop the signal, and I eventually got 42 minutes of bad fantasy uploaded for all the world to see.

For everyone who believes the myth that professional authors were just born knowing how to write, I offer you the following proof that you could not be more wrong…

Jay’s fundraiser runs through the end of the month, and while they’ve already raised enough for the genetic sequencing, four years of cancer leads to some serious medical expenses, even with insurance. Click on over, check out the other acts of whimsy, and consider donating.

I guess I can’t stall anymore. I present to you now, Jim C. Hines reading the first chapter, a scene from the middle, and the climactic battle from his very first story.

And please remember. I got better!

If the embedding doesn’t work, click through to YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFbHgpH9bf0

Other Fundraiser Awesomeness

I know I spent most of last month pushing the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation Fundraiser, but there are two other fundraisers going on right now that I wanted to draw attention to, if only so you’ll understand why I’m going to be on YouTube in a purple cloak reading really bad fantasy…

1. Pat Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraiser. Pat is a fundraising machine, and every year puts together an outrageous number of prizes and rewards for Heifer International. Heifer helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation, promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry all over the world. One of his latest posts listed “Geekery for Gamers” rewards, including the chance to play True Dungeon at GenCon with Pat, myself, Mary Robinette Kowal, and a few other awesome people to be named later. It’s possible there may be some signed copies of Libriomancer showing up in the rewards pile soon, too…

2. Sequence Jay Lake’s Cancer. Jay is an award-winning SF/F author who has been battling cancer for more than four years now. He’s running out of treatment options. One possibility is to genetically sequence his tumor to see if that suggests other possible ways to fight back. Unfortunately, the cost is between $10K and $20K. So Catherine Shaffer and Mary Kowal decided to do a rather creative fundraiser, and persuaded various SF/F folks to do whimsical things at different reward levels.

They raised more than $20K in the first 6 hours. For my act of whimsy, which was the $6000 goal, I’ll be reading from my very first–and very bad–novel, a 50,000 word story about my D&D character Nakor the Purple. And I’ll be doing it IN COSTUME AS NAKOR! I warn you now that it will be painful, so when I post the video online, please remember that nobody’s making you watch, and if you choose to watch, you can’t hold me responsible for the consequences.

Catherine and Mary are adding more goals, and any additional money raised will go to help Jay’s other medical expenses.

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While the SF/F community isn’t perfect, and we certainly have our problems, sometimes we are pretty damn awesome.

ConFusion Schedule

I have my tentative schedule for ConFusion next weekend:

Friday 7:00:00 PM Inclusion in an Expanding Fandom
Saturday 10:00:00 AM Author D&D
Saturday 3:00:00 PM Aicardi Syndrome Foundation Fundraiser: Group Cover Pose Unveiling
Saturday 4:00:00 PM Lady Voldemort
Saturday 5:00:00 PM Mass Autograph Session
Sunday 10:00:00 AM Reading: Jim C. Hines & Diana Rowland
Sunday 12:00:00 PM Dumb Questions

I may also be participating in a skit on Saturday night, which should be fun.

I’m excited about a lot of the programming this time. The inclusion in fandom panel is something I feel strongly about, and I love that we’ll be starting off the convention with a conversation about how to make the experience more inclusive. Because it’s nice that conventions are comfortable for me as a straight white male author, but it would be even nicer if we could work harder to make them comfortable for everyone.

The Saturday Group Cover Pose panel will be the unveiling of the collaborative efforts of myself, John Scalzi, Mary Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Charlie Stross, photographed by the wonderful Al Bogdan. Please note that the actual photoshoot will not be public. (I’m told there had been some questions about this.) My plan is to talk about Aicardi Syndrome and the fundraiser, about sexism in book covers and the genre, and then reveal the AWESOMENESS of our group cover. There may also be something special to auction or raffle off at the end of the panel

Then there’s the Lady Voldemort panel, which started from a question I posed online. On Twitter, I think. I asked how the Harry Potter series would have been different had Voldemort been female. And not just Harry Potter, but how does gender affect the way we write villains in general? How would the evil and horror of Sauron have been different? How did the White Witch being female affect the way she came across in the first Narnia book? It led to a fascinating discussion online, and I expect the panel to be equally good.

And then there’s author D&D and reading with Diana and talking about dumb questions and seeing a ridiculous number of my friends and fellow authors.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to this con!

Five More Potential Hugo Fan Writer Nominees

Thanks for all of the suggestions and discussion on my Hugo Fan Writer post yesterday.

I’ve been struggling for a little while now to balance blogging, the fundraiser from last month, finishing CODEX BORN, and other stuff. Looking back, I realize that I rushed to get yesterday’s post done, which resulted in it feeling clunkier and a bit less thoughtful than usual. My apologies for that.

As I was reading through the names people suggested, I immediately kicked myself for not including some of them. Others were unfamiliar, which is awesome, as it gave me new people to go check out.

One of the most recommendations was for Racheline Maltese, who writes both essays and fanfiction. Which got me thinking … so I checked out the category definition over at the Hugo site. As far as I can tell, wouldn’t fanfiction writers be eligible for the Best Fan Writer award?

::Bracing myself for the outraged backlash::

Anyway, here are some more names to check out, both for potential nominating purposes and just because they write stuff that’s worth reading. Please note that this is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, and I would love to see more suggestions and recommendations.

Charles A. Tan - This is definitely a “kicking myself” recommendation. I’ve been following Tan’s roundup of writing/publishing/spec fic links for ages. He’s an active reviewer, and also contributes essays to places like the World SF Blog. I will almost certainly be nominating him for Best Fan Writer.

Bogi Takacs - I hadn’t come across Takacs’ blog before, but it received multiple recommendations in the comments. I read through some of Takacs’ reviews, which focus on underrepresented groups in SF/F. You can see a master list of tagged reviews here, or check out Takacs’ Hugo Eligibility post.

Ana Mardoll - Naomi Kritzer recommended Mardoll’s essay about Twilight and disability, specifically with regards to Bella’s clumsiness. I live with someone who deals with chronic pain, and for whom a fall can mean a trip to the ER, so a lot of this resonated with me. I continued reading about Mardoll’s thoughts on video games, bullying in Narnia, and eventually decided that if I was getting this drawn into her blog, I definitely needed to give her a shout-out.

Foz Meadows - Her top ten posts from 2012 include essays on bullying and Goodreads, rape culture in gaming, racism in Revealing Eden … how come I’m not already reading this person’s blog? I blame ALL OF YOU for not bringing Meadows to my attention sooner!

Tansy Rayner Roberts - Another “kicking myself” name, because Roberts is another person I’ve been reading for a while now. She’s written about women in comics, unpacking fantasy vs. historical sexism, Doctor Who, and so much more.

Hugo Fan Writer Nominees

During my acceptance speech last year, I said, “There are so many brilliant and wonderful fan writers out there. I don’t know if there are enough rocket trophies in the world to recognize everyone who’s written passionate, insightful, clever, funny, and flat-out awesome articles and essays about our community. But I’d love to see us honor as many of those diverse voices as we can.”

Pop quiz: when was the last time more than one woman made the final ballot for the Best Fan Writer Hugo?1 And when was the last time more women than men made the final ballot?2

I’m not saying the people who made the ballot didn’t deserve it. But this sort of trend makes me believe fandom needs to broaden our scope. To that end, I’m trying to pull together some of the fan writing (mostly blog posts, because that’s what I tend to read) that stood out for me last year.

I would love to hear your thoughts on who else deserves recognition, because I know there are a lot of great fan writers I’m either not aware of or else I’m just forgetting, because of brain-leaks. I’ll probably do a follow-up on this, or maybe run a few spotlight blog posts for people I believe should be on that ballot.

N. K. Jemisin: Things People Need to Understand, Issue 223.2. I like Jemisin’s writing, both fiction and nonfiction, and this piece makes a number of good points about the state of fandom and the so-called agenda of people pushing for change and accountability.

Cat Valente: Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees: Gender and the Fallout Over Christopher Priest. Addressing and documenting the differences in how men and women are treated online.

Seanan McGuire: Things I Will Not Do to my Characters. Ever. In which McGuire responds to the question, “When are Toby or one of the Price girls going to be raped?” Because apparently this must happen in order for her work to be “realistic,” which is both messed-up and symptomatic of larger issues.

Genevieve Valentine. For her writing about sexism and objectification in the SF/F community.

S. S. White, aka calico-reaction. Purely for the number of good reviews and discussions of SF/F books, stories, and shows.

These are just a few of the people who come to mind as contributing to the ongoing conversations in fandom. But there are so many more. (I know the instant I post this, I’m going to kick myself for omitting someone.)

Who do you think should be honored this year for their fan writing? Please leave your suggestions in the comments, along with links and whatever additional thoughts you’d like to share. If the links cause your comment to go into moderation, don’t worry about it - I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments and free those up as quickly as I can.

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2006 ↩
1974, if my research is correct. ↩

Touched by an Alien, by Gini Koch

Gini Koch’s Touched by an Alien [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] opens with Katherine “Kitty” Katt killing a rampaging alien with a Mont Blanc pen. Based on this act of impulsive heroism, a group of hot aliens from Alpha Centauri recruit her into a secret organization devoted to finding and stopping these evil superbeings.

If you hadn’t guessed, on a scale of fluff to serious, this one falls closer to the fluff end of things. Which isn’t a bad thing. I’ve written a fair amount of fluff myself, after all. This world needs more light, fun stories!

As with most books, there were things I liked, and there were things that didn’t work for me as well. It’s a quick-paced story with plenty of action, both alien butt-kicking and romantic/sexual. And I appreciated that Koch  used her A-C aliens to explore religious prejudice and other issues. It wasn’t just heroic aliens coming to fight evil; there was a bit more backstory going on there.

The biggest thing that bothered me was the way the relationship between Katt and the A-C Jeff Martini progressed.  The explicitly sexual scenes weren’t a problem, but the jealousy and possessiveness both Jeff and another A-C display toward Katt cross the line into creepy, as in this exchange:

He grabbed my upper arms. “Prove it.”

“Prove what? Jeff, I–”

“Prove who you belong to.” His eyes flashed as he pulled me to him and kissed me.

I know this sort of aggressive domination comes up in a fair number of romances. And I recognize that there’s a lot of fantasy and wish-fulfillment going on in this book. All of the A-Cs are gorgeous, the men and women both, but they’re only interested in intellect and personality, making Katt the hottest thing on the base. And Katt has some of that Harry Potter chosen one thing going on, where she’s the one who discovers most of the solutions and saves the day. In a more serious novel, I don’t think it would work. In a lighter wish-fulfillment book, it mostly does.

I know that for some people, having a hot, sexy man (or woman) aggressively pursuing and dominating you can be a very attractive fantasy. But Jeff kept setting off my domestic violence warning bells. There were external reasons for some of what happened, but it didn’t work for me.

I’d say that if your warning bells are similar to mine, that might be a problem in reading this one. On the other hand, if you appreciate that kind of fictionalized/fantasy romantic aggression and assertiveness, I suspect you’ll really enjoy the book.

Overall, there’s a lot of fun stuff going on here. And the audience is obviously out there, judging by how well the books have been doing. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’m the right audience for this one.

The Fishnets Pose

There I was, working on the fundraiser and talking to donors about what pose to do next. When author Allison Pang pops up on Twitter and says that if I do the cover for her book A Brush of Darkness, she’ll send me the fishnets. She even offered to pre-tear them for me!

Around the same time, two different people requested that I do–you guessed it–A Brush of Darkness.

How could I refuse?

My thanks to Allison for bringing something truly special to this cover pose, and for just generally being a fun human being.

This wasn’t the most painful pose I’ve done, though it wasn’t entirely comfortable. But I think it highlights that we haven’t moved beyond the chainmail bikini mentality as much as we’d like to think; we’ve just modernized it.

Blog Mirrors, Award Season, Audible Libriomancy, and Other Books

Just a few quick things today. First off, LiveJournal has been acting up again, so this is a reminder that the blog is available on my site and through Dreamwidth. There’s also an RSS feed.

Secondly, it’s awards season. The only thing I really have from last year that’s eligible for anything would be Libriomancer. So if you’re eligible to nominate or vote for the Hugos, the Nebulas, the Oscars, or whatever and would like to read a copy for consideration, let me know and I’ll see what we can do to hook you up. And if not, that’s okay too.

Speaking of Libriomancer, I found out yesterday that the audio book for Libriomancer had come out…well, yesterday. I don’t see it on Amazon yet, but it’s up on the Audible website.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, other people have books out too! Saladin Ahmed’s book Throne of the Crescent Moon [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is out in paperback. This one continues to get a lot of good buzz. My review of the book is here. Diana Pharaoh Francis’ latest Horngate Witches book Blood Winter [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] just came out as well. And Tobias Buckell launched his collection Mitigated Futures for his birthday. He’s also offering Tides from the New Worlds for the price of a Tweet or Facebook post.

And that’s all I’ve got today. Have a good weekend, all!

Two More for the After Dinner Crowd

We’re well past the $13,000 mark with four and a half hours to go! Every time I try to predict how much we’re going to make, y’all blow right through it. I thought $10K was a long shot, and then today I was thinking it would be awesome if we could hit $12.5K.

At this point, I’m not even going to try to guess whether or not we’ll make it to the $15,000 goal. I’m just going to say thank you and put up another pair of cover poses.

The fundraiser runs through midnight tonight!

First up, we have Twisted by the delightful Jennifer Estep. This pic nicely demonstrates both the boobs-and-butt pose and the foreheadectomy epidemic sweeping the genre.

I also did my best to match the anthology Fangs for the Mammaries, edited by Esther Friesner. I was delighted to have a story in an earlier volume in this series. Friesner puts together such fun stuff.

I definitely didn’t get the angle right in this one, but it was the best I could do without a much bigger box. I’m just sad the pink fangs don’t show up more clearly.