Alan Baxter's Blog, page 84

Iain M Banks on why science fiction is not for dabblers

Twitter (which gives me so many great links) led me to this article in The Guardian by Iain M Banks. In it he addresses the crossover of literary writers into SF. He uses a great example of a writer coming up with a fantastic new idea – basically, a murder mystery where the crazy twist is that the butler did it! And he equates this to non-genre writers dabbling in SF. And he's right.

If a person hasn't read a great deal of SF, then decides to write some, it's almost certain the person in question will be, to some degree, rehashing old ground. If the sum total of a person's SF experience is Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey then anything they come up with is likely to have been dealt with before in one way or another.

Banks says:

…science fiction is a dialogue, a process. All writing is, in a sense; a writer will read something – perhaps something quite famous, even a classic – and think "But what if it had been done this way instead . . . ?" And, standing on the shoulders of that particular giant, write something initially similar but developmentally different, so that the field evolves and further twists and turns are added to how stories are told as well as to the expectations and the knowledge of pre-existing literary patterns readers bring to those stories. Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke . . . and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.

As he says, failure to do this research when trying your hand at SF leads:

…usually to decent and only slightly sniffy reviews (sometimes, to be fair, to quite excitable reviews) while, off-stage, barely heard, howls of laughter and derision issue from the science fiction community.

It's not elitism, it's simply respecting the genre you're writing in. There are some genres where repeating the old tropes in new places with new characters is enough, and the readers enjoy that. But even those old genres still evolve and new ideas permeate well-trodden ground. But with science fiction the development of ideas is so rapid and all-encompassing that not studying the genre is foolish.

If you want to be a good writer, you must read. I don't know any good writers that don't read like books are being rounded up and burned the next day. We can't read enough. I'll read a page at every opportunity. Apart from experiencing how others writers do it, you're an integral part of the evolution of fiction by being a reader. Do you know any artists that don't visit galleries? Do you know any musicians that don't listen to music?

Reading voraciously is a pre-requisite for being a good writer. And reading within your genre is essential to know what's happening in the field of writing you want to be involved with. It's essential also to read outside your genre – everything from novels to short stories to newspapers – to get as broad an experience of writing as you can and to learn from that. But it's never more important to know your genre than it is with science fiction.

Read all of Banks' article – it's essential reading.

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The end of an era – typewriters are no more

This makes me a bit sad. I've always had an affinity for typewriters, since I wrote my first ever stories on my mum's old Remington when I was about seven years old. I've used a typewriter as my website logo for a while now. They've always fascinated me as these things that can make your words permanent, that help you get a story out and share it around.

Of course, I would never trade a PC for a typewriter now. Seriously, copy and paste, edit, search and everything else makes a word processer superior to a typewriter in every way. That's progress. But it is sad to hear from this article in The Guardian that typewriter production is going to cease. Apparently, Godrej and Boyce, a Mumbai-based typewriter company, have just 500 left in stock. Once these have been "sold, or disposed of", they will switch to making refrigerators instead. People still need cold milk, even though we've moved on from ribbons and return carriages. The saddest thing about that is the comment "sold, or disposed of", as it seems even of those 500 left, lack of demand means some won't find homes.

Another interesting fact, according to The Guardian, is that Mark Twain became the first author to submit a typed manuscript with Life on the Mississippi in 1883. I wonder who will be (or even already has been) the last?

I searched out a few other interesting typewriter facts, cos I'm a nerd like that. Did you know that:

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. (If you know of a longer one, please let me know in the comments.)

The longest common English word that can be typed using only the left hand is STEWARDESSES.

The longest English word that can be typed with the right hand only is JOHNNY-JUMP-UP (a type of flower).

The qwerty layout was designed for manual typewriters initially by Christopher Sholes all the way back in 1872. He purposely selected a physical layout that was difficult to type, so that typing speeds would be reduced. This was needed to reduce the jamming of "hammers" used to create individual letters on manual typewriters.

Jack Kerouac, a fast typist at 100 words per minute, typed On the Road on a roll of paper so he wouldn't be interrupted by having to change the paper. Within two weeks of starting to write On the Road, Kerouac had one single-spaced paragraph, 120 feet long. (From wikipedia.)

William S. Burroughs wrote in some of his novels—and possibly believed—that "a machine he called the 'Soft Typewriter' was writing our lives, and our books, into existence," according to a book review in The New Yorker. (From wikipedia.)

In a homage to the great machine that revolutionised our ability to share our words, The Guardian has put together a photo montage of great writers at their typewriters. Here's Hunter S Thompson working at his ranch circa 1976 near Aspen Colorado:

(Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

See the full set of images at The Guardian website here.

Farewell, typewriter – you'll always be my little website icon.

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LiveJournal crosspost test

Please excuse this post – I've been having trouble with crossposting to LiveJournal. I mean, let's face it, LiveJournal is deader than MySpace really, but I know lots of people that still use it, like folks desperately cycling along the freeway as cars blitz past at twenty times their speed.

But anyway, I'm just trying this and if it doesn't work I'm done. Finished. Screw LiveJournal.

As compensation, here's a picture of Chewbacca riding a giant squirrel, killing Nazis.

EDIT: It didn't work. Fuck you, LiveJournal, that's the last straw. You're Google Wave to me now.

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There are two types of writer…

It's often said that there are two types people, for many different situations. There are glass half-full and glass half-empty people. There are extroverts and introverts. There are artists and academics. None of these are entirely accurate. (In truth, there are people who believe there are two types of people and people who don't.) Like everything else in life, the reality is more complicated – pretty much everyone sits somewhere on a long, grey scale and they move up and down that scale depending on the situation. But we like to categorise things.

Writers are often classed as one or other of two types: planners or pantsers. A planner is someone who works out everything in their story, knows all the details and then writes. A pantser is a writer who has ideas and a rough plot, then they start writing and create a story by the seat of their pants.

In a recent interview with Joe Abercrombie, George R R Martin, author of the epic fantasy A Song Of Ice And Fire, described this concept in the best terms I've ever heard. The video interview is here. What George said about there being two types of writers is this:

"There are two types of writers – the gardeners and the architects. The architect plans the entire house before he drives a nail; he draws up blueprints, he knows how deep the basement is going to be dug and how many rooms there are going to be, where the plumbing is going to be. And then there are the gardeners who dig a hole, plant a seed and water it with their blood, and then they see what comes up, and they kind of shape it. I'm much more of a gardener. I know where I'm going, I know the eventual end of the book, but I don't know necessarily every twist and turn of the road that's going to get me there." – George R R Martin

I love Martin's description, especially about the gardener watering his seeds with blood. And, if I'm honest, I'm also much more of a gardener than an architect. But I do draw up some plans as well. I have an overall idea for a book, I have basic characters in mind, a few key events. I write a rough timeline. But I know that once I start to write the story, it will start to tell itself. I know the characters will do things I don't expect. As a writer it's important to let the story and characters evolve organically, and, if they do things against the original plans you made, change the plans, not the story. At least, that's how I do it.

I think a lot of writers do things like I do. A number of my friends who I've discussed this with use a similar method to me. Martin's broadly right in his explanation, and it is a valid truism, but to extend Martin's metaphor, writers like myself are gardeners, with architectural leanings. I roughly plan out the garden, more or less know where all the beds and trees are going. Then I start to plant seeds, let them grow and tend them. That process is one of the things I love most about writing. Seeing where a story takes me, being surprised by the things my characters do and say, never gets old. It's why I keep writing. I know the stories are coming from somewhere inside me, I know the overall idea I'm trying to convey. But the process of gardening is pure joy.

I don't mean to dismiss the architect writers by saying this. I'm sure they get equal joy from their method. But I bet there's a bit of gardening in there too. We all do things differently, some more alike than others and we all have varying degrees of one thing or another in our methodolgy. I love Martin's description above and, when the subject comes up again as it inevitably will, I'll use that example myself. Writers to tend to err heavily towards one or other method. And by talking about architects and gardeners, I won't have to explain what a pantser is any more.

There are two types of people out there – those who will agree with this post and those who won't. But many will probably agree with some parts and not others. There are a million shades of grey out there, and that's what makes the world such an interesting place.

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RealmShift review and interview at a writer goes on a journey

a writer goes on a journey is a great review site and official news site of the Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, or ASFFWA. (Which we like to pronounce AsssFWA!) They recently reviewed RealmShift and interviewed me as part of Aussie Author Month.

There are some nice comments in the review, such as:

It's more than intriguing to entertain the ideas in his book.

As popular as it is for reviews to state that fans of X or readers of Y will like Z book, Baxter makes comparison impossible, but that's not a bad thing. He has gone out on a limb to produce new fiction, first self publishing and then getting a reprint deal from a small press, and he has succeeded with RealmShift.

You can read the full review here.

In the interview I talk about the process of getting RealmShift into print, and other aspects of my writing and publishing life. You can read the interview here.

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Some thought provoking words on worldbuilding in fiction

I read this post on S F Signal, which links to this post on Warren Ellis's website. Both are essential reading for writers. In the S F Signal post, China Mieville talks about worldbuilding and references the M John Harrison quote that Warren Ellis posted. I'm going to repost that quote here, because it stunned me and made me really stop and think. Go and read the S F Signal post, and then read the quote below. I might ruminate on this and post some more about worldbuilding later. It's got my brain cogs a-turnin'.

M John Harrison On Worldbuilding

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader's ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn't there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn't possible, & if it was the results wouldn't be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder's victim, & makes us very afraid.

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Do puppies dream of dragons?

Usually when I'm writing, my best mate is snoozing beside me. I often wonder if I sometimes channel his dreams. Certainly not for the darker and nastier stuff I write, because Penry is about the gentlest and most pacifistic dog I've ever known, but perhaps the more whimsical things come from his sleeping mind. And the dragons. And anything to do with balls, bones and beaches.

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On episodic storytelling – A Game Of Thrones

I've been thinking a lot lately about different styles of storytelling. This was triggered mostly by watching the incredible TV adaptation of George R R Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire. The TV show is named after the first volume in Martin's masterful epic, A Game Of Thrones. When it comes to epic fantasy, nothing comes close to A Song Of Ice And Fire (ASOIAF). There are many reasons for that. Mainly it's Martin's superb ability as a writer, but it's his ideas and characters as well. Of course, any good story can be spoiled by a bad writer and any good writer can make a decent job of a bad story. All the really good books out there are the ones that combine great writing with original ideas and well realised characters. By those criteria, ASOIAF stands head and shoulders above so much other epic fantasy storytelling.

Of course, your mileage may vary. I've even come across people that don't like ASOIAF at all. I can only imagine they also hate puppies. There are some very weird folk out there. Others may think that ASOIAF is good, but they have other favourites. Regardless, the majority view is that it's brilliant. The majority are right.

The HBO television adaptation is a no-expense-spared homage to the books. After three episodes it's clear they're not cutting corners and I'm enjoying seeing a visual interpretation of the books more than I thought I might. They've got some details wrong, they're missing stuff here and there, but it's an adaptation, not a facsimile. But it's not a patch on the books.

Rarely is the TV or film version of a story better than the written one. You can draw some examples where the film is better, the most obvious to me being Blade Runner, the greatest film of all time. It's based on the Philip K Dick novel, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. I prefer the movie to the book, but they're actually vastly different things. The influence and inspiration is obvious, but Ridley Scott did very different things with the film than PKD did with the book.

Even so, to return to ASOIAF, a ten episode television adaptation of an 800 page novel should move at a pace and be enthralling and intense. It should grip the viewer, make us desperate to see the next part. Certainly it should have a faster pace than a novel that could prop up a table with three legs. Now while the television series is brilliant, it's not as compelling as the book for me. And I couldn't figure out why.

I know the story, so reading the book was new while watching the show isn't. That's certainly part of it. No matter how detailed and carefully made the television show is, it can't possibly contain the detail and characterisation of the book. And here we start to see the issue at hand. Martin's massive story – and it does almost redefine the term epic – is not one of those long, meandering big fat fantasies. It's a fast, powerful big fat fantasy. And it's like that because of the method Martin employs in his storytelling.

It's episodic, just like a ten part television series. Except each part is very short. In ASOIAF every chapter is titled with a character name. We know immediately that the chapter in question is going to be told from the point of view (POV) of that character. By doing this Martin manages to tell his story with a huge cast of characters. Every POV chapter contains numerous other players, all important to the plot. But Martin is able to focus each of those sections through the eyes of the chapter character in question. We then quickly develop favourites – Tyrion, Jaime, Brienne, Arya to name a few of mine – and we desperately want to get to the next chapter told through their eyes.

This turns an 800 page novel into a huge collection of 10 page (or so) interlinked short stories. And Martin writes them that way. Each chapter is almost self-contained, like a good short story, while being an integral part of the whole.

I love short stories. I love reading them and I love writing them. I particularly like selling them. And most other people like short stories too. Even people that don't really think they like short stories, because they want a bigger narrative with less left untold, can still appreciate a good short yarn. Just some people read very few of them and prefer to immerse themselves in a novel with their reading time. George R R Martin makes ASOIAF so compelling because he gives us that massive, epic story, told in hundreds of short stories. Faster and more intense than episodes of a television show. Deeper and more detailed than a television show could ever be. He tells stories within stories and takes us on a journey of intrigue and politics that would bore us silly in an historical textbook. And he does it with tight, episodic storytelling.

Because we switch POV with every chapter, the story never slows down. We know that once this chapter ends, we're going somewhere else. Sometimes Martin cheats – for example, he'll have a Jaime chapter and Cersei will be involved. Then he'll immediately follow it with a Cersei chapter, then maybe another Jaime one. He's just managed to stay in one place for three chapters with only two POV changes between two characters. Clever stuff. But he very rarely does that.

By having a key character POV in each of his theatres of action, we keep track of what's going on. We might not remember all the names of all the players, especially when there's a long gap between visits to certain characters or scenarios, but that lynchpin character holds us in place and we can follow along. And each of those chapters is a little self-contained slice of a far, far bigger tale. You can tell by the way the chapters start. I'll give a few random examples from the first book in the series:

"It's the Hand's tourney that's they cause of all the trouble, my lords," the Commander of the City Watch complained to the king's council.

Through the high narrow windows of the Red Keep's cavernous throne room, the light of sunset spilled across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the walls where the heads of dragons had once hung.

The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen and near two thousand foot from their castle at Karhold.

Each of those is quite random – I just leafed through A Game Of Thrones and picked the opening line of three different chapters. Two of them are even the same character POV. But any one of those sentences could be the start of a novel or a short story. There's no reference to the previous chapter because we've shifted from those events to somewhere new. There's no presupposition of place or situation until we're several paragraphs in and discover where we are and what thread we're picking up. And even then, it could be hours, days or weeks since we were last in the company of this particular POV character.

Any good book will keep you turning the pages, even a massive, fat fantasy in multiple volumes. But no one does it so well or so consistently as Martin does in ASOIAF.

Honestly, Martin is a genius, a proven master with what he's achieved with ASOIAF. The next volume is due out in July and I believe there are two more volumes after that slated to wrap up the whole thing. The TV show is going to have one series for each volume. So Martin had better keep writing so the actors don't outgrow the story before he's finished. Regardless, whatever he does, the books will always be more powerful and more compelling than the television series. And not just because we get more in the books – more characters, more detail, more history – but because of the way Martin has chosen to tell that story. The method that so often had me bleary of a morning because the night before I sat there reading saying, "Oh, just one chapter before bed." Then it was another Tyrion chapter. Then an Arya chapter. And then… and then…

There's a lot that makes Martin's masterpiece so good, but it's the way he tells the story that makes it so addictive.

What do you think? Is this why you love it too? Or why you hate it?

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Win a copy of Dead Red Heart

You'll remember I've mentioned a couple of times that my short story, Punishment Of The Sun, is in the new anthology of Australian vampire stories, Dead Red Heart, from Ticonderoga Publications. Talking to the publisher recently, I asked if they'd be interested in giving a copy away to a lucky reader here. They said yes.

So if you're interested in reading a fantastic tome packed with 33 stories about vampires in Australia, it's as easy as this: Leave me a comment, telling me something interesting about vampires, and the one I find the most interesting by the end of the week will win the book. Hint: your interesting "facts" about vampires don't have to be true. They can be, but I'm open to anything, so get commenting.

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Swancon 36, Natcon 50 follow-up post

I was going to post more stuff from Swancon, including a roundup of a few of the panels I attended and the things discussed. The truth is, my brain is a blur from all the awesomeness of the con and I don't really have the time or inclination to discuss all the panels in detail. Suffice to say that it was all great and you should really check out a con if you haven't before.

I have come across a couple more photos though, which I'd like to share. I've already mentioned Cat Sparks' Flickr set, and there are enough photos in there to keep you occupied for ages. There's also this Flickr set from Tom Bicknell, which is well worth a look. I'll put a couple of his shots below that are personal favourites (for obvious reasons!)

Firstly, here's a shot of the Oh zombie, my zombie panel. From left to right are Rob Hood, myself, Jason Nahrung and Grant Watson:

I mentioned in the previous Swancon post about the Ticonderoga Publications fifteenth birthday party, and associated launch of Dead Red Heart and More Scary Kisses. Here's a shot of part of the signing at the launch. Nearest the camera is Pete Kempshall, then myself, then Joanne Anderton who is neatly masking Martin Livings and Carol Ryles at the end:

And finally, purely for the self-congratulatory nature of it, here's Pete Kempshall enjoying a damn good book:

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