Stephen Deas's Blog, page 4

Giveaway: Dragons (26/4/2015)

Less than two weeks now before I have to tick a box choosing to which one of the various people whose views entirely fail to represent my own I shall nevertheless assign the futile weight of my support. Futile as in the incumbent Tory had a majority larger than the total number of votes for his closest rivel.

So here today are the official policies of the five main national parties in the event of a zombie apocalypse:

The Conservative Party has no official policy, but pretty much plans to carry on as normal, as it already operates on the underlying principle that anyone on benefits is already one of the shambling walking dead. Zombies will be required to prove their undead status in order to claim any state support and to enrol on state-controlled “emplyment” schemes such as workfare.

The Labour Party refused to comment, leaving individual spokesmen to hint at a policy that would be the same as the Conservatives while vehemently demanding that it was entirely different.

The Liberal Democrats stated policy of inclusion and acceptance will be extended to include the undead, according them basic inhuman rights according to European law. However, leaked policy documents have subsequently indicated a plan to incite the zombie apocalypse shortly before the election on the grounds that it can’t possibly be as bad as the pasting they’re going to take otherwise.

UKIP “Bloody Zombies, Coming here from the Afterlife, Taking our Jobs and Eating Our Brains” stated an emphatic policy of rapid deployment of the army and the formation of armed citizen militias to quell the zombie apocalypse while quelling was still possible, mobilisation of the entire medical research establishment to explain how zombification is linked to homosexulaity, and the drawing up of a short-list of various “Johnny Foreigners” to smacked about. Phrases like “spirit of the Blitz” and frequent mentions of Chruchill accompanied the newly-formed UKIP Zombie Apocalypse Policy (ZAP) Team as they disappeared in to the pub.

The Green Party take the view that a zombie apolcalypse causing the extinction of the human race is part of the natural order of things and probably no bad thing, and state that it would be “irresponsible” to try and do anything about it, although if such a thing WAS to happen it would certainly come about because of Climate Change and GM crops, and prevention is better than cure, right, soyou’d vote green if you had any sense but you won’t because in the end it’s just about what’s best for YOU, right. Followed by some sulking.

No, I still don’t have the first fucking clue who to vote for either, nor is there much point in this constituency. But I do have some books to give away, and this week it’s a bit of an Election Special, since in part it’s a story of a bunch of over-privileged knob-heads too busy stabbing each other in the back to notice the incoming catastrophe that’s about to burn every last one of them [1]

This is a rare collector’s special giveaway, in that all three books will be signed and lined first edition hardbacks. That makes it a bit unique and special and also worth something for once, because this time there’s a catch: I want you to vote. All you have to do to enter yourself into the draw is leave a comment here, and the giveaway will run until the end of Saturday 9th, and if you’re from outside the UK then that’s it, that’s all…  But if you’re IN the UK and eligible to vote then I require you to use that right on the 7th in order to win my prize. No vote, no win books. If you don’t want to vote then I respect your right to make that choice, and you can respect mine not to give you free stuff.

Usual deal otherwise – comment on this post before 10th May and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy.

No one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently not up to date with posting things (sorry previous Gallow winner – I will do it this week).

[1] Not everyone burns

Hugos, Puppies and Terrorists (20/4/2015)

This is supposed to be a post about the Hugo slate, but I’m going to digress for a while first.

I grew up in England in the seventies and eighties. My memories of that time are of (among other things) a background noise of Irish terrorism. I lived in a conservative part of the country, both upper and lower case, and “terrorism” was universally how it was presented. A lot of people where I lived commuted into London to work. Occasionally a bomb went off. They hit train stations for a while, now and then, which is why there haven’t been any litter bins in London stations for a very long time. We didn’t talk about it much. It was a bad thing that was going on in the background. Occasionally my dad would be late home when he was working in London because of a bomb threat, but not all that often. Even when he worked in Northern Ireland for a few years, it was still background noise. It was only decades later that I put the pieces together. My dad was a chemist. His area of particular expertise was explosives (we still have some German chemistry textbooks from his days in university straight after the second world war, because back then Germany was the cutting edge when it came to blowing things up). He worked for the Ministry of Defence, for a while he worked in Northern Ireland. I’ll never know for sure because he’s gone now and so I can’t ask him, but for a while, somewhere in a lab using science, I think he hunted bomb-makers.

We rarely talked about it. It never intruded much on our lives. I was aware of it, and later, when I was older, I was aware of the causes and the grievances. My one and only point with all this, really, is that it didn’t change how we lived our lives, what we did, who we talked to, where we went or what we thought. The mantra of the times, whenever it came up in conversation, whether in politics around the dinner table, was that we should carry on as we were, keep on with our lives as though nothing was happening because otherwise the terrorists would win. I don’t know how well we really did that as a society at the time. I didn’t live in Northern Ireland, I’d heard about internment but I didn’t really know what it was; yet it seemed to me at the time, living in my rather narrow bubble as it was, that the philosophy, at least, was right. Looking back now, it seems that civilisation eventually succeeded. The terrorists changed many individual lives. The response of the state changed many lives too, and very little of it for the better, but in the grand scheme of things we didn’t fundamentally change. Thirty years on, people have largely stopped blowing each other up. The landscape is much the same, but for the most part there are words instead of violence.

In a way I have deep anxiety that we are losing this new so-called “war on terror.” This time we are letting it change us. We are letting it make us be afraid, and amid that fear we are shrinking the cage in which we live and giving away little pieces of the freedoms we have allowed ourselves. It’s an old adage in politics: fearful people are easier to control. I hope, thirty years from now, I’ll be able to look back and relax, to see that yes, we wobbled like we did before, but we got over it, and we didn’t let fear win, because fear is what lets monsters grow among us.

So look: the puppies of all various adjectives are not terrorists. They gamed the system, that’s all. And before anyone rushes to change that system, have a good long look around at all the other awards out there. The Hugos aren’t broken and they don’t really need fixing. You don’t like the slate? Go to Worldcon and vote no award. Threats of disrupting the awards for the rest of time are just that, threats. Don’t let fear or anger or outrage change us. It’s sad that people feel they have to be this way, but don’t try to shut them up and don’t try to keep them out, because that’s when some far worse monster slowly grows behind you.

WANTED: Cover Art (14/5/2015)

A few weeks ago a put up a little short story on Amazon, The Sin Eater. This was a pipe-cleaner for some more substantial stories I wanted to publish this way. The next story I want to put up is a Thief-Taker story. I want to publish it in about two months. The text is largely good to go but I have a problem with the cover. Here is an approximation to the cover I want.

Gollancz have kindly supplied the lettering to match the previous thief-taker books. There’s some more design work to be done and the colours are arbitrary at the moment, but I like the picture and the motif fits the story perfectly (a small band of thief-takers head out into the bay at night to investigate the arrival of a mysterious ship). So I’d like this for the cover, or something in a similar vein.

I found this particular piece here on deviant art. I’ve tried to contact the artist via Deviant Art’s message service, I’ve tried via the artist’s mail address given in his profile and I’ve tried via the contact link on his own web page, asking whether the rights to use the picture as cover art for a story are available for purchase. I’ve had no response. Too busy, not interested I don’t know. So OK, open call for submissions then. I’m looking for some cover art. I’m prepared to pay for it. The example here shows you what pretty well what I’m looking for (although if I’m comissioning from fresh I’d like something in portait format with bland areas of sky and sea for the title and the name, and might switch their positions).

So if anyone knows anyone who might be interested in taking on a commission like this, please let me know. Budget will be limited but I don’t expect artists to work for free. Meanwhile I continue my own searching, and if the original artist of this piece ever happens to get in touch, he’ll have first dibs. Suggestions here or via Twitter or e-mail me.

Giveaway: Cold Redemption/The Last Bastion (13/4/2015)

Not much news this week. I’m going to be at Edge-Lit on Saturday 11th July doing a workshop on narrative structure and a panel on something or other that has currently slipped my . . . Ok, the title is “How Much History Does Fantasy Fiction Need,” and I can give you the very short answer if you’re not going which is that fantasy doesn’t strictly need very much at all, but you should still come along anyway because Joanne Harris is going to be on the panel too and she will be much more interesting than I am.

BUY MY BOOKS: Gallow: The Anvil. Gallow: Solace. Why haven’t you got them already? They’re cheap and short!

Ren, I’ve got another Critical Failures post on the way about relationships but it’s turning out to be long and complicated and not as much about fiction as I originally thought, so you’ll have to wait a few weeks. Also Zafir has something more to say about villains yet. In the mean time I’m still in a Gallow frame of mind, so this week I’m giving away more Gallow.

Usual deal – comment on this post in some way before Sunday 19th  April and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. This week I’m looking for video game recommendations, please, since I appear to have quite a bit of time on my hands.

No one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently up to date with posting things (it’s so much easier when I don;t do my own stuff – Gollancz are dead efficient, unlike me).

The Anvil, Solace, Dragon’s Reach

Three novelettes set in and around the events of Cold Redemption and The Last Bastion

The Anvil: in the aftermath of The Last bastionthe new Marroc king of the Varyxhun valley is looking for someone to help him steal a forge from the Forkbeards before they can mass a new army. With Gallow missing, it falls to Arda.

In Solace, Gallow and the Vathan war-leader Mirraj travel together, each on their own mission. They carry with them the cursed Aulian sword, the Edge of Sorrows, a piece of armour from a demon, and something is following them.

In Dragon’s Reach, Oribas and Achista enter the second of the two old watch-towers overlooking the mouth of the Varyxhun valley. As Witches’ Reach before it, the ruined tower has dark secrets buried under its roots. Unlike Witches’ Reach they are still there.

Giveaway: The Fateguard Trilogy (5/4/2015)

News? I suppose so. The proofs  for The Silver Kings have been marked up and posted back. That really is that then. Job done. Zafir’s last ride. Bellepheros’s last potion. Tuuran’s last swing of the axe. Red Lin Feyn’s last cup of jasmine tea.

Last week I made the mistake of talking about something else before I got on with what really matters here, so look, here’s a link to the self-publishing thing instead of me going on about it some more, and here’s the new article about villains in SFF. There done.

I realise you all have been getting ready for this with little preliminary events like Eastercon and the Hugo nominations, but Nathan Hawke’s novelette Solace comes out as an e-book on the 9th April. In order to get ready for what will doubtless be THE (next) fantasy event of the year (and so soon after the last one too), Nathan is launching a(nother) massive publicity campaign which consists of giving away another signed copy of The Fateguard Trilogy. 940 pages. 330,000 words. Everything Hawke has ever written. A man with an axe on the cover. What more could you want?

You can buy Solace and the first novelette The Anvil from e-book retailers. If you happen to read or th have read The Anvil already then Nathan would like to know what you think, since the current pair of Amazon reviews are worse than useless betwen them.

Usual deal – comment on this post before Sunday April 12th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. Open worldwide and no one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but  it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently up to date, in that all recent winners have been posted.

Villains (part two) 5/4/2015

About the author: Her Holiness the Dragon Queen Zafir, Speaker of the Nine Realms, has played both pro- and antagonist roles in her career as a fictional character. She is either the aloof fist of authority to be respected and feared, a liberator of the oppressed and enslaved, or a dragon-riding genocidal psychotic tyrant bitch-queen from hell, depending on your point of view.

The Villain with a Thousand Faces (Part Two): The One-Line Backstory

Yes, back again, so shut up and pay attention and I don’t care if you are on fire. Last time I deigned to share some wisdom on the nature of villains (antagonists, if you absolutely must) we cast an eye on the most common of villains, the cardboard cut-out shrub with no soul. These are basically the no-backstory villains who simply exist in order to rub your heroine up the wrong way and get hit round the head with an axe. Today our villains get slightly more sophisticated.

Note: again, for clarity – when I talk about villains here, what I actually mean are the antagoinists of a story – the people who get in the way of your central character doing what they damn well want. Everyone is the hero of their own story. If your hero is an angel then the demons are thevillains. If your hero is a demon then the angels are the villains.

The One-Line Backstory

Yes, they get some backstory, a whole line of it. Think of the difference! From nothing to a COMPLETE SENTENCE. It’s possible that the one-line backstory villain is more common than the total cardboard cut-out; in fact a lot of cardboard cut-out villains technically have a one-line backstory kicking about somewhere, but frankly, if your one-line backstory doesn’t actually have at least some bearing on or relevance to either the plot of your story or the motivations of your heroine, well then then WHY DID YOU WRITE IT? If your story is supposed to be about your heroine’s struggle to make a success of the small rural tavern inherited from a distant uncle with a dubious past, then relevant one-line backstories for the villain of the piece might be: “competing owner of the next tavern along the road who wants to make our heroine fail so that his own business succeeds,” or “former associate of said distant uncle with a dubious past who was involved in the same dubious goings on and thinks the tavern should be his,” or “bloke form same dubious past who has hidden secrets in the tavern that he wants to stay secret.” Even “heroine’s evil twin who just doesn’t like her,” while pretty lame, at least has a connection to the protagonist, if not to the actual story. “He’s just mean, ok,” isn’t a backstory. “He’s a demon from the 11th dimension” IS a backstory, but unless being a demon from the 11th dimension has some sort of relevance to either the history of the heroine or, better, the history of the uncle with the dubious past or of the tavern itself, being a demon from the 11th dimension is actually irrelevant to both the heroine and the story and seems rather pointless and WHY DID YOU WRITE IT? I suggest that a one-line backstory that has no actual connection to the heroine or the main thrust of your story is not only a waste of time, it’s actually worse than doing nothing at all – you leave the reader trying to figure out what the backstory has to do with anything, and then they start questioning everything and picking at your worldbuilding and all sorts and it’s all downhill from there. A backstory that works, however – one that’s actually useful – fits seamlessly into the story and explains WHY the villain is the villain, why he stands in opposition to the heroine.

I have a mild OCD that means I like lists, so for no other reason than that, I’m arbitrarily going to create three categories of one-line backstory villains. Take it as read that these overlap somewhat, and there may be other one-line backstories that don’t fit into these categories, although if you find any you should keep very quiet because I don’t like to be wrong and I have a dragon.

The background-generic backstory

These are villains whose backstories are related to the global or at least general set-up of the world in which the story happens. We moved on a bit into the one-line backstory villains in the last part, with villains who are avatars of (or agents for) something else (the Big Bad, the Opposing Ideology). These are examples of background-generic backstories. They are not, usually tied to a specific individual, and there will likely be many villains at large in the world for whom the same one-line backstory is true. Hydra has many lieutenants; the Big Bad has lots of avatars; the world has plenty of avaricious slum-landlords/greedy bankers/serial killers/racist orc-haters/property developers/whatever to choose from, and the one in the story just happens to be the one with whom the the heroine crosses swords. In a story with many bad-guys, the generic one-liner can usefully serve to cover all the cannon fodder whose purpose is to show up, be humiliated by the heroine, and then conveniently expire.

The background-specific backstory

A rather more personal villain is one whose backstory is tied to something quite specific in the story’s setting. There are many slum landlords, but only one slum landlord for the tenement block in which the heroine lives, for example. There are many demons from the 11th dimension, but only one whose secret true name which will damn them forever back to hell is hidden in a secret room in the cellars of the tavern the heroine has inherited from a distant uncle with a dubious past. A significant difference between the generic and the specific is that in the case of the generic villain, a new one can reasonably arise in place of the old with basically the same agenda and motivation and goals, whereas for the specific villain, doing so would feel somewhere between contrived and utterly ridiculous. A villain with this backstory will usually be properly unique.

The heroine-specific backstory

Even more personal. Again the villain is unique and has a backstory that sets him up as opposition to the heroine, but now it’s not to do with the world or setting or other outside circumstances, it’s directly related to the heroine herself. Something she’s done, something she’s going to to, something she’s trying to achieve, whatever it is, the villain’s opposition is personal right from the start. Arguably I should split this into generic and specific too – arguably the heroine could have done something in her past that has resulted in a whole slew of people having a personal grudge or vendetta against her (ratting out the mob, thwarting the schemes of Satan, exposing Tory party lies, or otherwise crossing some large body of organised villainy). However, that sort of generic-but-personal doesn’t fit terribly well with the rest of the argument I’m about to follow, so let’s just acknowledge that it theoretically exists, smile and wave, and then shove it back in its box; because even in the examples I’ve given, it usually comes back to one specific villain leading the charge (in fact, my favourite example from last time, The Terminator, could easily go either way, but a part of the strength of that story is how unrelentingly personal the attack is.

I’ve ordered these categories by increasing intimacy to the heroine. Different levels of intimacy fit with different styles of story-telling. If your story features a single heroine and is heavy on her character aspects, a villain who is intimately bound to her will fit better than a very generic villain. If your story is an ensemble piece with multiple heroines and a broad sweeping scope then a generic villain might fit better while a very specific villain might actually skew the narrative force towards a heroine who wasn’t supposed to steal the stage. Depends on how intimately your story focusses on your heroine(s), but matching the intimacy of the villain (whatever that actually means, but I think you get the vague idea) to the intimacy of the story will generally result in a smoother ride.

Generally. There are always exceptions. But one should only ever approach exceptions having first understood the rules to which they apply.

And here’s a proposition for you: is it possible that every memorable villain ever created can be reduced to a one-line backstory without losing their significance to their story? In fact, I challenge you find one that can’t[1]. No matter how simple or complex, subtle or blunt, that one line is a very powerful place to start, and you shouldn’t ever lose sight of it.

That’s almost it for today’s ponderous lecture. Worlds to conquer, castle to burn, protagonists to execute in inventive ways, that sort of thing. But before we part there’s a rather special cardboard cut-out villain that I forgot deliberately neglected last time and needs a little more attention: the scenery chewer.

The Scenery Chewer. What do I mean by that? Loki in The Avengers. Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons (and yes, that movie did exist, no matter how much you all might wish to pretend it didn’t. I acknowledge it for it’s dragons, which at least had a properly bad attitude, and for Jeremy Irons, who… never mind. Shut up). Alan Rickman in Prince of Thieves. Alan Rickman in Die Hard. Alan Rickman as Professor Snape. Alan Rickman in, well, you get the picture. Notice that every single example here is a movie, not a novel. That’s because I can’t think of a single novel with a good scenery-chewing villain in it where the villain isn’t actually a dominant character in the story. . . and, kids there’s a big clue for you, right there. Remember lesson one of being a *cardboard cut-out* villain (as opposed to the sort that’s actually a real person)? You exist as a foil for the protagonist. As far as the heroine is concerned, your purpose is to oppose her [2]. You are black to her white or white to her black. A good villain exists within a story just enough to define the heroine’s strength, virtue, ability to play pokemon, whatever it is that’s being tested, and no more. Their job done, the cardboard cut-out villain dies or otherwise conveniently buggers off until the next instalment. The clever cardboard cut-out villain may integrate himself into the fabric of the world somehow to improve his chances (as the Avatar of the Big Bad or the Nasty Ideology or some such), but his job is most certainly NOT to steal scenes, and that is what the scenery chewer does (and if he doesn’t then he’s not chewing well enough). So ask yourself, before your villain chews the scenery, what the point of it is? Is it a substitute for being interesting in some way that actually benefits the story? Because that’s bad, that is. Simply to be funny/cool/exciting? I suppose I won’t chide you for that, but do beware of the villain who moves from stealing the occasional scene to stealing the whole story, and for the love of Robert E Howard, don’t let him make your heroine look bland. General rule: it works in movies, it doesn’t work in books.

And yes, yes, next time I write I’ll talk about subtle, three-dimensional villains. They’re difficult and needs lots of precious thinking time. Worlds to burn, castles to execute in inventive ways, etc., ok?

This article first appeared on Fantasy Faction earlier this year. The penultimate chapter in Zafir’s story, The Splintered Gods is out in paperback now. The last volume, The Silver Kings will be published by Gollancz in June/July.

[1] I put several seconds of thought into this and I couldn’t think of any, which is good enough for me. Find one for me. I’ll secretly be impressed while my dragon eats you.

[2] Not all stories are about the heroine. More on that next time. And there are ensemble pieces. But your basic story is hero/heroine vs. villain, and you are advised to understand how that works even if you choose to move away from it.

Don’t Buy My Book – Adventures in Self-Publishing (29/03/2015)

If you’ve been reading these pages at all regularly, you’ll probably know that The Silver Kings is coming out in a few months and that that’s going to be the last fantasy Stephen Deas writes for Gollancz for a little while (Nathan Hawke is still a more open question). Now this is sort of annoying and sort of good. It allows (forces) the pursuit of other projects. But on the other hand, there was more to the story of that world that I’d wanted to tell. Long story short, I’m contemplating self-publishing at the moment. I have no idea whether anything will come of this, but part of that whole contemplation thing was a decision to self-publish a few shorter stories to see what happens and (much more importantly) figure out how to do it.

Last week I self-published a short story through Amazon. Here it is. It’s a story that appeared in the BFS anthology Unexpected Journeys published for World Fantasycon 2013. It’s about six thousand words. Problems I encountered with this first pipe-cleaning exercise:

I haven’t figured out how to make it available for free. Yet. It’s free if you’re signed up to Kindle Unlimited
Getting a cover sorted out can be something of an arse. Note the lack of author name and title. I also have no idea how well this cover art comes out on a kindle for reasons…
If you download a sample from Amazon, you’ll see the paragraph indent formatting is all off. I believe I have fixed that. I believe I have uploaded the fixed file. I believe I did that about a week ago. Yet still the file Amazon shows as its sample is the original published upload (my first major mistake was publishing before the formatting was right in the belief that I could change it later).

So I’m kind of torn. I’d like you to download The Sin Eater so that someone can tell me whether the formatting and cover are now present and OK (they’re not on my version, but I bought the original and I can’t seem to get an update to happen). But on the other hand you shouldn’t be paying for something that isn’t formatted right. So don’t buy my book, but if you happen to be able to get it for free and happen to have a look, please do let me know whether the paragraph indents are fixed (and as of writing they’re still not fixed on the Read-A-Sample sample, so if that changes I’d like to know too!) and whether the cover downloads OK.

[UPDATE: The feedback I've had so far is that it's all fixed. So, um, DO buy my book after all...

Lessons learned. I'm in the process of getting another story ready. A story about Syannis the thief-taker, a sort of the-beginning-of-everything companion to go with the end-of-everything Silver Kings. Hopefully I'll do better.

Some new reviews have shown up. One of Empires that actually likes it! Hurrah!

“All round a cracking piece of fiction and something that a lot of Science Fiction fans can really get behind especially as the tales not only keep you hooked but leave you wondering throughout if mankind can triumph against such odds. Magic.”

I think, if I'm honest, the fairly ciritical SFX review was one of the most accurate. "One tenth Iain M Banks-lite … 90% is half urban thriller, half Michael Bay’s Transformers." I don't think that was meant in a good way, by the way, but for better or worse, it's on the nail. I note that Empires wasn't submitted for the Clarke award. Probably wise.

A new one up for The Royalist too.

“... an intriguing, drama-laden, heart-thumping crime thriller with historical accuracy and authenticity. I found myself sorely disappointed at the last page; not with the ending, but that it had ended!”

I struggle harder to find a critical alternate point of view with this one, but the guy on Amazon who doesn't like William Falkland for having a mindset that very accessible to modern thinking (as opposed to having a Seventeenth century mindset) has a point.

Anyway, I'm in an Empires frame of mind at the moment, so this week's giveaway is Robot Overlords by Gollancz's very own Mark Stay, who also wrote the script for the movie.

"The adults lost the war and now the kids must save the world! Robots rule the streets and the people are locked in their homes. Stepping outside risks being vaporised by a hulking Sentry or picked off by a lethal Sniper. Through the ruins of Britain a group of kids set out to join the Resistance. Hot on their heels however is their old teacher turned robot collaborator Mr Smythe."

The movie has a limited release in theatres and is on right now (Vue cinemas seem to be showing it), so there's some Easter viewing for you if you like 

Robot Overlords

Usual deal – comment on this post in some way before Sunday 5th  April and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. No one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently a week behind with posting things.

Glorious Angels (23/03/2015)

A few days ago I read that an author acquiantance had “finished plotting out his feminist epic fantasy” or something like that. I find myself raising an eyebrow when men call themselves feminists – unfortunately I’ve come across a few who say that when what they actually mean is that they support the status quo and aren’t actively trying to push women back into the dark ages. Which, guys, isn’t quite the same thing.

But anyway, in this case I’m inclined to think the intent was pure enough, but it still left me with a frowny face of something being out of whack.  Why is a man writing a feminist fantasy? It seems wrong to me. Isn’t that a contradiction? I don’t have strong opinion on this so by all means share an alternative point of view, but I felt it was somewhat patronising – as a man, if I did that, aren’t I effectively stepping in to do feminism for you when actually my place, if I want to support, is to stand in the background and cheer? Seems to me that as a male writer the thing to do is portray all characters, irrespective or gender, race, sexuality, anything else, with equal passion, care, respect and agency. And in SFF choose a setting that supports that ideal?

In the spirit of that thought, this week’s giveaway is Glorious Angels by Justina Robson, a “groundbreaking new novel from one of the genre’s most respected authors: a thrilling mix of science, magic and sexual politics.”

Usual deal – comment on this post in some way before Sunday 30th March and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. No one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently up to date with posting things.

There’s also an interesting article about cover art here, from Orbit’s art director.

Villains (part one) (15/3/2015)

About the author: Her Holiness the Dragon Queen Zafir, Speaker of the Nine Realms, has played both pro- and antagonist roles in her career as a fictional character. She is either the aloof fist of authority to be respected and feared, a liberator of the oppressed and enslaved, or a dragon-riding genocidal psychotic tyrant bitch-queen from hell, depending on your point of view.

The Villain with a Thousand Faces (Part One)

There’s been a lot of talk and discussion in these halls over the last months and years about the evolution of the fantasy hero, anti-hero, thing, whatever is the protagonist-du-jour. It’s all very interesting. There’s no doubt that a good story of any genre needs, almost without exception, a good central character or cast.

The protagonists, generally speaking, need to be characters the reader can cheer or boo for. They are, by definition, the champion or advocate of some cause which ought to be readily identifiable. Many protagonists are heroes, but not all. Some are out-and-out villains and gleefully so; but I’m not really here to talk about heroes and villains in some sort of moral sense, more to blow the trumpet for the oft-overlooked foil to the main character’s quest.

The thwarter of dreams, the denier of ambition, whether those dreams are of avarice or altruism. The antagonist. The one(s) who stand against. The obstacles to the hero getting the girl (yawn) or establishing her dominion over all she surveys (much better). It is true, I’m afraid, that most antagonists are also cast as villains, while most protagonists are cast as heroes; and I put it to you that this is the voice of history rearing its ugly head. Whoever she is, the protagonist is the hero of her own story, and the villains, frankly, are whoever get in the way. Write your motives as pure or base as you like, that’s still what it comes down to. In my story, I am the hero. In many others, I am the villain; and for the purposes of the rest of all of this, I’m going to talk about heroes and villains instead of pro- and antagonists, because “hero” and “villain” are much blunter words and I like them.

The Cardboard Cut-Out Shrub With No Soul

Villains, then. Let’s start with the easiest: The Cardboard Cut-Out Shrub With No Soul, also often referred to as the cartoon villain or sometimes the comic-book villain (a disservice to many comic books). The cartoon villain is easily recognisable. He has no personality, no discernible motivations or desires except the one that makes him the villain. There is no nuance, no subtlety, no particular effort at rationale or explanation. He is simply the villain, doing bad things, against which the heroine or heroines must pit themselves and overcome. At this point, some of you will no doubt be ready to laugh and scoff and point and jeer at the idea of an utterly shallow and two-dimensional villain. You couldn’t get away with writing a hero like that, after all.

But really? Bite back your shameful cackling and remember this: a villain serves a different purpose. A villain is there to provide obstacles to the heroine. To some extent, the depth of the heroine’s resolve is revealed only by the villainy of the villain, by his strength and power, not by how much backstory he has. Writers use these cookie-cutter villains all the time. Guardians of the Galaxy: Ronan the Accuser and Thanos. Cardboard Cut-Out Shrubs With No Soul, both of them. A lot of super-hero movies, in fact (the better villains get some personality, but we’ll come to that later). Many action stories, war stories, cardboard cut-out villains are used all over the place, all the time, by good competent writers, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. They can’t carry much weight in a story, but that’s sort of the point: if you want as much time and focus on the protagonists as possible, a complex villain only gets in the way. So don’t be afraid to use the cardboard cut-out shrub. I can even find one in Game of Thrones if you like (Gregor Clegane), so note that even the great Martin, antithesis of cardboard cut-out characters, still uses them now and then.

There’s a possibly apocryphal story of a convention panel where one of the panellists got a bit sniffy about the Lord of the Rings, pointing out that at least his/her villains had some sort of reason / motivation / backstory, only to be given a righteous smackdown by the rest of the panel. I don’t know if it’s true, but if anyone has any doubts as to the potential of the cardboard cut-out villain, I give you two of the most widely recognised fantasy villains: Smaug and Sauron. Free from personality and backstory [2], but do they work as villains? Hell yes. And are you going to tell me that the Terminator wasn’t a good villain? Are you going to tell me he was anything but one-dimensional? Being one-dimensional was his whole point, wasn’t it?

Yes, a story with a cardboard cut-out hero or heroine is likely to be pretty lame, but a cardboard cut-out villain can work just fine. It’s both a pitfall and a strength of this villain is that they’re black and white. Their opposition to the goals of the heroine needs to be direct and straightforward and instantly recognisable, something a reader can easily understand. The heroine must carry all the drama of the story through how she overcomes the challenges, internal, external, whatever, necessary to force a final confrontation of some sort and then either fail or prevail.

Cardboard cut-outs don’t leave much wriggle room for twists at the end – they can’t suddenly be persuaded or redeemed because things like that (to be done well, at least) require foreshadowing and some crack in their armour or beliefs into which the heroine can insert a lever, and to make that work they need to have a little more depth. Darth Vader is arguably a cardboard cut-out villain in Star Wars, but the story moves him well away from that long before the end of Return of the Jedi, and rightly so. Nevertheless, if you want a story heavily focussed on the character of the hero or heroine, you might do better to ask “why not?” than “why?” when it comes to the cardboard cut-out villain.

The Cardboard Cut-Out Avatar of The Big Bad

I was a little cheaty with my examples before. Live with it. Villains cheat, lie, and twist the truth. So do heroes, but they try to pretend they’re better than us. None of my examples were actually human, and that leads me on to another kind of villain – the inexplicable thing that threatens the heroine (or her society, culture, beliefs, blah blah whatever, just as long as we’re all clear that threatening can be anything from poking a knife at me to refusing to accept my dominion of all I survey – and from the back of a dragon I can survey a long damn way). No one considers attempting to argue or debate or negotiate with Sauron because Sauron simply IS the Big Bad. I can’t think of a better example of this sort of villain than the Terminator: it’s here to kill you, it cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, and it absolutely will not stop until one of you is dead.

The Big Bad can be aliens, supernatural forces, you can go all the way with this to volcanoes, a virus or mutating neutrinos if you like, although some of these are more or less likely to have a some form of avatar as a focal point of their villain-ness. The point is that the Big Bad is coming from somewhere so different that effective communication, even if anyone wanted to, isn’t viable, and the avatar reflects exactly that (doubts or inner conflict push our villain out of the cardboard cut-out collection and into the more complex sort I’ll witter about some other time). To make this sort of villain work well it helps for the Big Bad to be integrated into the fabric of the setting.

Sauron is a distant implacable villain, but the history of his presence throughout the world is felt, deeply ingrained and permeates almost everything. He is a part of Middle Earth’s history. He belongs there, and that’s why he works. Further, even if the Big Bad is an implacable alien force, its avatar can still have a human face and the conflict can still be personal. Cthulhu’s priests might want to take over the world, but they can also kidnap and sacrifice the heroine’s boyfriend while they’re at it [3].

I come back to the Terminator, which executes this villain perfectly: the movie is quickly and unswervingly centred around the premise of a time-travelling killer; although the Big Bad is an AI that hasn’t even been built yet, it’s avatar Arnie is both a nigh unstoppable force that cannot be reasoned with and has a human [4] face; and best of all the conflict is made as simple and personal as a conflict can possibly be. Sarah Conner is battling for the fate of the world, true, but what makes the Terminator so visceral is that as far as she’s concerned she’s battling for her own survival. One of them has to die and there’s no other way.

Cardboard Cut-Out Avatar of Some Other Ideology

There’s another variant that I don’t see much in fantasy, which is the Cardboard Cut-Out Avatar of Some Other Ideology. Particularly in genre writing, ideological conflicts (and thus villains) are fairly well represented, but if the story is about ideological differences then its villains are unlikely to manage to stay properly two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, and nor should they.

Elsewhere the story is different. Anything with Nazis, for example. Robert Redford in The Winter Soldier (and if that’s a spoiler, I don’t care. Psychotic bitch-queen from hell, remember?). I’ll come to more complex ideological villains some other time, but for the simple cardboard ones work The Ideology works much the same way as the Big Bad. You just need it to be an ideology that’s easily recognisable and be prepared to cast it as the Big Bad without much thought.

That’s it for this instalment; but before you go back to Twitter, carry this thought with you. Complex villains might sound great, but 95% [5] of story villains are cardboard cut-outs and FOR GOOD REASON: the stories in which they appear aren’t about them, they’re about the hero or the heroine, and every second of page-time spent turning your villain into something more is page-time you could have spent on the person your story is supposedly about.

This article first appeared on Fantasy Faction back in Autumn last year. The penultimate chapter in Zafir’s story, The Splintered Gods is out in paperback now. The last volume, The Silver Kings will be published by Gollancz in June/July.

[1] or food, if your point of view is that of a dragon, but they think that about everyone.

[2] Dear pedants, yes, I realise there is more in what I shall call the secondary material. Writing a lengthy biography of your villain as supplementary material and sticking it on the internet doesn’t count.

[3] For the sake of the story, she’s pissed about this.

[4] ish…

[5] This is a guess but I have a dragon so it’s also right and shut up.