Dragon Awards - The Allied Vote

It's award time for fans of fantasy and science fiction, and that can mean only one thing - DragonCon ballots are up and ready for completion.  The red fiery trophy is the new hotness that all the cool kids want to win, and my on-line social circle has a heavy presence on the ballot.  Fortunately, Kai Wai Cheah already put together a handy primer and list of this year's best of the best, so I don't have to. Go read his blog post for a complete breakdown. 

Best Science Fiction Novel: The Secret Kings by Brian Niemeier
Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal): A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day
Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel: Swan Knight’s Son by John C Wright
Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel: Rescue Run by Jon Del Arroz
Best Alternate History Novel: No Gods, Only Daimons by Kai Wai Cheah
Best Apocalyptic Novel: Codename: Unsub by Declan Finn and Allan Yoskowitz
Best Horror Novel: Live and Let Bite by Declan Finn

It's Research, Not Gravedancing

My morning commute has slowly evolved into the Diversity and Comics Roadshow.  For those not in the know, the nameless creator of this YouTube series talks comics.  Usually, he reviews a single issue of a comic book, but he also produces episodes on various subjects, many of which revolve around Marvel's self-inflicted gunshot wounds.  Not only does he provide interesting historical background information, he spots trends, and calls out the good and bad of every issue.  From his analysis of the artwork itself, it's obvious the man knows what he is talking about.  He is also a funny host with a dry wit and often a barely restrained rage that entertains even as it informs.

Most of the information that he provides in his autopsies of what doesn't work does me no good.  The constant litany of SJW and barely past their teens writing mistakes are not the sorts of things that I need to guard against.  But it's darn fun to be able to vicariously experience the dreadful writing and erratic plotting and clumsy left-wing preaching through D&C.  The guy tries to bridge a middle ground, but the egregious own-goals of Marvel are clearly pushing him hard into the welcoming arms of the alt-right.  His SJW takedowns and thorough and professional and hilarious.

The field of comics serves as a useful case study in the cancerous effects of SJW culture in general and feminism in specific.  Comic books themselves did about $1 billion in sales in 2016, compared to a global film market of $38 billion and video games market of $91 billion.  As a content creator in the literary world (the biggest of the four mediums at $127 billion), this serves as a powerful incentive to rein in any impulses you might have to sip from the SJW kool-aid.

With a smaller environment, we can more easily see the market effects of a little thing like erasing the biggest names in the industry (Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Spidey, etc.) and brown-washing them with brand new demographic placeholders.  Spoiler alert!  It's not pretty on either the creative or the financial side.


Or take this classic example of what happens to the sales of a comic book as it's main writer and intellectual shepherd continues to drink from the SJW kool-aid spigot:

 

That's a drop off in readership of 75%, and you can make chin music about dying industries and the death of print media all you want, and you'll still be left with a minimum 25% dropoff in readership due to the quality of the work produced.

 

While comic books are only directly analogous to literature, they are a powerful analogy.  All of the rules of plot, pacing, characters, personality, writer's voice, underlying messages, and so on apply equally to my chosen medium as they do to comic books. 

 

The dearth of quality writer's podcasts has long been a complaint of mine.  Oh, sure, it's easy to find podcasts full of NPR's "Writer's Almanac" style wankery.  It's easy to find writers talking about their own work.  Finding nuts and bolts analysis of what works and what doesn't when it comes to stringing sentences together is a lot harder.  Luckily, D&C doesn't just produce that style of critique, he floods the digital airwaves with it.

 

And my commute is all the better for having him along for the ride.

 





The Ideological Conquest of Science Fiction Literature

A must watch over-view that explains the ongoing revolution in science-fiction.  Much of this is old hat for the PulpRev crowd,  but it offers a nice, concise explanation and fills in a few gaps for the newcomers.

A Newcomer's View of the PulpRev

Dominika Lein, author of, I, The One, posted an in-depth look at her experience with the #PulpRev.  It's gratifying to read about her experiences, as this is exactly the spirit that I've been pushing within the community.  I've lifted a few choice quotes, but you should really go read the whole thing:

It's been a little over a month since I emerged from lurking to larval wiggling about in the PulpRev trenches. Time flew fast.

In my time as an independent writer for the past four years, I've never seen support like I've already experienced in the PulpRev community. 

I would have never gotten that kind of support from a regular writing group or a place like NaNoWriMo...An aside: the only kind of support NaNoWriMo knows how to give is of two kinds; Rabidly cheerleadering "approved elements" to include in stories (you know) along with word counts regardless of quality and yet parroting the "proper ways to write" which ranges from mangled quotes of Strunk & White to Wendig blatherings to generic marketing/myths (which always includes "GIVE AWAY FREE COPIES ...(so I can get it for free)").

The #PulpRev has experienced phenomenal growth over the last six months, with no sign of let up.  We've attracted newcomers like Dominika and old hands as well.  In addition to serving as a ready-made fan base, the #PulpRev features some of the most supportive fans around.  We don't just buy each other's works, we do beta-reading, marketing, and encouragement, too.  At least for now.

One thing that I don't have a firm grasp of yet is how well this atmosphere will scale.  As the crowd continues to grow, will we ossify into the NaNoWriMo self-absorption, or will we continue to show the same level of support for each other?  My guess is that it will scale perfectly.  As more writers of good will enter the lists, they'll bring their own talents and time into the fold.  That will increase the amount of support even as the number of people who need support increases.  The overall level of support that any given writer receives won't increase - you'll still have two or three people beta-reading and reviewing and recommending your work - but the volunteerism will grow as the culture does.

The one thing to watch out for is the moochers.  The guys who always beg for help, but never offer anything up in return.  They will come, have no doubt about that.  It's surprising that we haven't seen any of them yet, or if we have, I haven't seen them*.  Perhaps they fade away when they realize that the #PulpRev crowd isn't stupid.  We notice the little things, and without question, those who don't give shall not receive. 

My advice, for what it's worth, is to continue welcoming new writers with open arms.  Be wary, but welcoming.  And start looking for ways to build up a stronger reader base rather than a writer base.  Our weak link right now is that the people most drawn to the #PulpRev are those who have thought about what modern literature is missing and set out to correct its shortcomings.  But there are throngs of readers out there looking for us who just don't know we exist.  Once we crack that nut, you're going to see a quantum leap in our profile.  Jon Del Arroz has been doing yeoman's work to that end, but the movement as a whole has a long way to go.

Which shouldn't be discouraging, but inspiring.  We're going to be around for a fair few decades, even if it dwindles back to a few gaming bloggers writing stories for their own amusement.




Also, if you want to support one of the authors of this growing movement, you can do so by purchasing a copy of my latest #PulpRev novel, A Moon Full of Stars.  It's post-apocalypse the way it was meant to be!

Comics Exposure

Comic book fandom is one of those things that I've accreted through sheer osmosis.  Love the concept, love the culture, but never had the time, never had the money, but always had friends with both.  Whether it was reading an issue or two left on a couch or thrust into my hands at a friend's house, or catching up on trade paperbacks at the library (read: five years late), or just sitting back and listening to fans talk about the things, I've managed to keep up with all of the most important story lines.  Dark Phoenix Saga, Secret Wars, Supes punching reality in the face and rebooting the DC line, you're talking to a guy who can at least ask intelligent questions about what's up with the four color tales.

Now it's the internet's favorite complaints box, Twitter, that keeps me up on the latest dirt.  Or so I thought, until somebody passed me a link to "Diversity and Comics".  It's not what you think.  It's actually a series of thoughtful and intelligent reviews of comics by a guy interesting and funny enough to be sitting next to you at the gaming table.  Just check out the title on this bad boy:



Not only is the narrator an experienced and thoughtful reviewer of comic books as a specific medium, he has phenomenal insight into storytelling, heroism, action, and the all the rest of the #PulpRevolution's greatest hits.

Forget Game of Thrones, I'll be binge watching this for the next few days.

StoryHack, Issue Zero

Bryce Beattie recently put out the first issue of his action/adventure magazine as a proof-of-concept.  As a contributing author, for me to write a review of the magazine would be a bad idea.

 

But I'm going to do it anyway!

First, thought - don't take my word for it - download and read a copy for free.  Then you can decide for yourself whether the second issue KickStarter is worth backing.

StoryHack Action and Adventure has two things going for it:

1.  A central focus on action and adventure.  The contents cross genre lines with the first issue including pure fantasy, magi-tech, biblical fantasy, sci-fi, and even one story set in the contemporary real world.

2. Bryce's own vision.  One issue doesn't provide enough data to get your arms around Bryce's tastes, but you can get a feel for it.  My guess is that, as with Cirsova, after a few issues are out, regular readers will be able to point to a story and say, "That's a Bryce story."  The edges will be fuzzy, but there will be a certain feel to the kind of story that might appear in StoryHack.  Based on the limited size of the data set, it looks like they will be fast, furious, and fun, with just a hint of deeper meaning or passion to them.

The decision to include stories from a variety of genres was brilliant.  As a 'page one and straight on through til morning' reader, it was fun not knowing what each kind of story was going to be.  You may want to take a page from Cirsova and include a one sentence teaser before each story.  I never read them, preferring to go into each story blind, but (particularly when you've got a cross-genre magazine) a lot of readers appreciate that little warning about what to expect.  The hard copy/pdf has a blurb in the table of contents, but you don't have that in the Kindle version.

StoryHack: Year Zero also includes a few unexpected laughs in the form of Bryce's own advertisements.  In a normal magazine, these would be considered filler, but in Bryce's hands they provide a laugh, and more importantly, they provide a chance for the editor to engage directly with the reader.  What could have been wasted ink becomes a way for the reader to get to know Bryce a little better and begin establishing a relationship with him. 

That may not seem like much, but consider that most collections are a reflection of the editor.  The best magazines were synonymous with their editors, and you know from the editor's name what kind of story you're going to get.  Gernsback was pure pulp.  Campbell was men with screwdrivers.  Damon Kinght was lipstick smeared pigs in fancy ball gowns.   Both Gernsback and his stories were bold and daring.  Both Campbell and his stories were smart and technical.  Both Knight and his stories used pseudo-intellectualism to hide his incompetence. 

Pretty soon we'll have Bryce Style fiction, and that fiction will be a reflection of Bryce's personality. This is one reader that hopes those little injections of Bryce won't disappear once every column inch is bought and paid for.

 

Cirsova, Issue 5

Issue 5 of Cirsova represents a return to form after an average outing with Issue 4.  While Issue 4 included a few gems, it also suffered from the inclusion of far more stinkers.  Frankly, the double issue was a mistake - at half the size it would have offered the same value for the price by cutting the dross.  Issue 5 on the other hand is strong from top to bottom, with stories by several of my favorite authors:

• Schuyler Hernstrom brings the heat with another grim faced barbarian encountering ancient future-tech in a quest to save his village.
• Misha Burnett continues to show the world how to give the old New Wave spin on things a fresh face.
• James Hutchings reminds the world that there's life left yet within the Homeric epic genre with more of the John Carter saga. 
• Brian K. Lowe's outing doesn't quite rise to the level of his fantastic Invisible City, but he's another author that has yet to let me down.
• Michael Tierney manages to present a heroic Sacagawea who doesn't feel like a forced "U Go Grrl" within that sadly neglected setting for fantasy - the American frontier.  Okay, so it wanders from the frontier back to Madison's Washington D.C., but it still counts.

Even the stories in this issue that didn't pin my ears back left me feeling satisfied.  Lynn Rushlay, Jay Barnson, and Louise Sorensen's tales only suffer from being sandwiched so close to works by the authors listed above.  They are all fun stories that round out the issue without feeling like additions made just to fill space and pad the word count.

Beyond just proving that Cirsova can survive a dip in quality and come roaring back, this issue made me sit up and take notice of something that has happened over the last year.  After a decade long spell of having roughly one go-to author names (Glen Cook, for the record), I now have more than I can keep track of.  I was eagerly anticipating this issue not just because I trust the editor, but because I really enjoy the authors on the cover.  They give me something positive to look forward to, and that's something that I haven't had in a long time.

It's a great sign, this return to fun, and the rise of a new culture of writers dedicated to 'Cirsova style fiction' serves as a much needed corrective to the market.

THIS is Pulp

After slogging through a few less than stellar attempts at pulp and a pair of Hugo worthy novelettes, it feels fantastic to soak up some Schuyler Hernstrom.  It isn’t just palette cleansing, it’s soul cleansing.  It’s writing so rich that I find myself stopping just to prolong the pleasure. 

I had completely forgotten that Cirsova 5 included The Last American, a story by Herstrom.  Here’s the heroism.  Here’s the hope.  Here’s the nature red in tooth and claw and one man struggling to save his woman from powerful enemies against all odds.  When it comes to moments of transcendence, there are few better than Hernstrom.  Take the moment of the barbarian’s departure from The Last American:

He took a knife from his belt and cut away the flag with a length of cloth from the sleeve and turned to Tyur.  He tied the thing to the hunter’s thick arm.  Tyur looked down in awe.

“But I am not of your blood…”

“All who fight tyranny are of my tribe.”

That gave me chills.  It’s powerful writing that reminds you of what America can be, of what you can be.  It makes you feel better about the world and desire to do better in it.

This is the sort of thing that I look for in my fiction.  This is why I’m a proud flag waver in the Pulp Revolution.

The preceeding story, The Queen of Shadows was pretty darn good too, but it’s the story of a hive mind alien slaughtering humans, from the hive mind’s point of view.  Although a fine story, “hive mind hurting humanity” also describes all of the Hugo worthy works approved by the puppy-kickers, too (Zing!).  In all seriousness, it might have been better to have read The Queen of Shadows after reading The Last American.  Hernstrom brings the heat on the threat of the hive mind just fine without the savagery of The Queen of Shadows.

Dancing Around in a Suit Made of Pulp's Skin

We were analyzing the submission guidelines for one of those modern day pulp magazines that just doesn't seem to get it.  A few objections were made, speculation ran wild about what sort of stories they would wind up with, a good time was had by all.  Then the astonishingly well read Kevyn Winkless threw out a heck of a summary.  It's one of those comments that the world needs to read, but would normally disappear into the black hole of G+ comments.  This comment deserves a better fate, as it so succinctly (and amusingly) sums up my own beef with so much of the people milking the term "pulp".

Kevyn writes:

Actually, I think what's going on here is a bit more complex:

• they think they like pulp when really they like 1980s era DTV pastiches of 1960s era B-movies.
• not actually grokking the nuclear power core of pulp writing, they view it as akin to a downloadable skin for their fruit based communicator
• viewing the elements of pulp as being no more than a set of decorations they not unreasonably want to specify which decorations they want and which not.
• but they haven't thought deeply about either pulp or their own convictions - this leads them to both fumble when it comes to praxis and to lack confidence that writers will/can give them what they seek.

So much insight I can see my own gall bladder from here.

Geek Gab: The Enmollisoning

In case you missed it, the Geek Gab trio invited me to share a few thoughts on reading and writing this past weekend.  It’s not too late to drink from the well of my wisdom, or feast at the table of my obnoxiousness – either way, this is one hour of required listening for anyone interested in self-publishing.  Agree or disagree, I guarantee you’ll be thinking about at least one of the topics we cover over the next few days.

Watch Out!

I've made no secret about my hopes to read more works by the Old Reliables out there in the #PulpRevolution blog-o-sphere.  Well, Jesse Abraham Lucas isn't content to sit around waiting.  Jesse is putting together an anthology:

Back in the day a group of SF greats, Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Gordon Dickson, Harlan Ellison and Keith Laumer, each wrote a short story based on the same prologue. Apparently (I haven't read them, I'm going off the cover above just like you are) NO TWO ARE EVEN REMOTELY ALIKE. These authors had radically different styles, beliefs, and backgrounds, making it in theory an excellent idea, and the first thing I thought when I found out about it a day or two ago was, "I want to do that." So I did.

I'm not calling for submissions, I'm hand-picking our contributors, so if your name is on the list I'll publish your story, but I'll touch base with you on structure and clean up grammar and all that (of course I'm going to edit and contribute, I can't let this valuable exposure go by).

I'm so interested in seeing what comes out of this that I volunteered to beta-read whatever shakes out of his call.  It may be a few months before this title hits the market, but this also isn't the only example of this sort of organic content farming in the works.  You're going to see a lot of newcomers showing up in the market, and while their first forays might be a little rough around the edges, they'll get better.  Better yet, every one of these represents a literary cultural shift in the right direction, so I'm full-square behind them.

What Hugo Discussions Reveal

Take it away Eleanor!

Reading through coverage of this year's Hugo nominated works, both in mainstream media and in the on-line circles thrilled by the results of E. Pluribus Unum, it's striking how little conversation there is about...you know...the works themselves.

From Wired:

Another is that Best Novelette has lately emerged as a microcosm of the Hugos’ move toward gender and racial inclusion. Women have won the category four of the last five years, and all of this year’s nominees are women—except for Hiscock.

Nowhere in that article do they actually discuss the novelettes nominated by the women.  They mention that they are women, but don't really care to talk about the works themselves. 

Not surprising, given that these people don't read.

Consider Fuzion's coverage:

It’s because of interest from communities of fans (like the body that makes up the Hugo Awards voting committee) who make the effort to critically analyze the titles despite the fact that Marvel doesn’t do the best of jobs when it comes to promoting them effectively.

Yeah, except they don't critically analyzes the titles beyond a simple gender and race count.  That's not critical analysis, that's simple social justice scorekeeping.

These people don't read.

Let's check io9:

The Hugo Awards nominations were released this week, featuring some of the best and brightest works in science fiction and fantasy— most of which are relatively well known. Then, there’s one nominee for Best Novelette, a short story hardly anyone had even heard of... until now. It’s called Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex, by Stix Hiscock. 

All they want to talk about is Stix Hiscock.  They haven't read any of the other nominee's works, and have no intention of doing so.  Reading and talking about the best novelette stories is so passé.

These people don't read.

Check out the File770 thread where people talk about the nominees.  It's all pricing and tangential issues.  Nobody talks about the works themselves.  Scan the front page and look for any analysis of the works themselves at all.  There's no there there.  They've got Camestros Felaptron doing some analysis but he works in the sad, old Damon Knight style wherein he focuses on who people hang out with far more than what they actually write.

They don't want to talk about ideas.  They don't want to talk about ideas.  They only really want to talk about people.

Small minds.

Now, take a look at the front page of the Castalia House Blog.  On any given day, they've got six or seven reviews of works that talk primarily about what is in the work itself.  They read and analyze the things they've read, not who said what about whom, and oh my god did you see the dress John Scalzi wore on Tuesday it made him look so fat!  It's this dedication to reading and discussion of the works that first drew me to the Castalia House Blog, and it's the reason I'm proud to be a regular contributor.  It's a blog about ideas - a strange thing for a sci-fi blog in these strange days, to be sure.

But you know who talks about ideas?

Great minds.

The Measure of Success

Jim Fear and I had a great conversation recently, and this weekend you'll be invited to listen in as he guides me through another sprawling conversation about life, sci-fi, and everything.  One of the topics that came up is the inevitable success of the Pulp Revolution, how to recognize it and how to guard against the normal sorts of political decay that arise from success.  Notice, and this is important, that we talked about our plans for success, not failure.

The day after recording that, a Negative Nancy showed up in my social media feed with a few questions about that.  He wanted to know how I define success and pointed out that the #PulpRevolution is not the only game in town.  He wanted to know what made me think the future is pulp.  Friend-o there pointed out that there might be hundreds or thousands of lonely writers off in the wilds of self-publishing just doing their little thing because it feels right.  He wanted to know what made the Pulp Revolution so special.

Easy: a winner's mindset.

Everybody I interact with in the Pulp Revolution has a winner's mindset.  They are relentlessly positive individuals who channel their energy into their work and into each other.   They don't just work alone, tossing stories into the cold, harsh marketplace.  They have the brains to look back at what worked with the pulps, to take them apart, and put them back together again.  They have the desire to dig down into the roots of sci-fi, even the obscure little off shoots, to learn more about them.  They have the energy - writing their own works, reading, discussing, analyzing, experimenting, all of it in addition to handling the daily stress of their normal lives.  They have the sort of open-mindedness, the willingness to reconsider their beliefs in light of new information, the willingness to listen to enthusiasts of the Campbellian and New Wave revolutions - provided they bring their A-game and present cogent arguments, they have been embraced by the Pulp Revolution. 

The Pulp Revolution has gone from a handful of people to a mob in less than a year.  Just imagine how much further it's going to go in the next year, or two, or ten.  And keep imagining it, because that's how winner's think about the future.

And if you want to hear how winner's talk about the future, listen to Jim Fear's next podcast, because you're going to hear two upbeat, energetic, and downright funny guys go on at length about sci-fi.  It's going to be far more entertaining and educational than any panel you've ever seen at WorldCon, I can guarantee you that.

The Brighter Side of Indy Sci-Fi

Now is the best time to get into independently published science fiction.  Ignore what the marketing people have to say about it.  They deal only in raw, current numbers.  They look for today's hotness and promise immediate returns, but you're not interested in tomorrow, you're looking at the long haul.  It's easy to say that about you, even not knowing your name, because you're into science-fiction, which by its nature is a long-view genre.

So let's get our heads on straight here and think about the long view.  For starters, let's get the starting point right.  It's not here:

Segregating fantasy and sci-fi is loser thinking.

It's here:

Winners ignore the distinction.

It's the second most popular genre out there after romance. 

Looking into our psychohistory equations or our crystal-ball (they're the same thing, really), the near future might look bleak.  Nathan "Chicken Little" Housley has a full post where he does his Hari Seldon thing:

A survey of modern science fiction shows a repeated pattern of extinction events. In the 1950s, the pulps died. At the end of the Crazy Years of the 1970s, magazines died as the primary medium of science fiction and backlists died. The 1990s and early 2000s killed off the midlist writer. And, as the same old song plays of magazine sales drying up, rumors of publisher woes, and publisher wisdom telling authors that science fiction cannot sell, we stand on the verge of the next great crash for the genre. That this crash is happening in the 2020s and not in the 2010s is due to the 1990s' publish woes lasting into the 2000s, pushing back the date of the upcoming crash.

But he misses one critical factor in his analysis.  These extinction level events kill off the old dinosaurs, but open the way for new critters to rise up.  The big publishers, hide-bound, slow, and perfectly adapted to 20th century tech are going to suffer, but the mammalian independents, quick, nimble, and adapted to 21st century tech are going to thrive.  That's why you should get in now, while the getting is good.  Every year you wait to start, you're ceding readers to the competition.  You're letting other mammals fill in those ecological niches.

And one of the best niches in the future will be science-fiction.  The marketers tell you to play the numbers.  Romance, mystery, thriller - that's where the big numbers are.   That's true, but that's also where the swarms of writers are.  You've got to fight your way through a bigger crowd to get traction.

More to the point, fighting for what's big now, is thinking like a dinosaur.  Look at the trends.  Readers of mystery and thrillers are still well served by Bigfiveasaurus, and so aren't leaving the big five in droves the way they are sci-fi.  Look again at those bar graphs - the sci-fi field, though smaller than mystery and thrillers, has a bigger independent section.  That tells us Bigfiveasaurus isn't meeting the needs of the reader, and so they are going elsewhere.  For years, many of them went nowhere.  They just left.

With the advent of self-publishing, they are coming back into the fold.  They are finding the sorts of stories they want to read.  They are finding that self-publishers are doing the jobs the Big Five won't.  Again, we look to Nate for the future of the market:

Embrace the fantastic and the exotic. Embrace adventure. These are the key to sales in science fiction, and the shelter from the upcoming storm, just as they brought science fiction out of its previous crashes. Don't make the same mistake that drove hundreds of writers out of the field. Avoid realism.

So don't be afraid to ignore the experts.  You're not interested in today, you're interested in tomorrow and a thousand more after that.  Embrace your sci-fi mindset and look to the future.

You won't regret it.

You also won't regret reading Sudden Rescue.  It's what the future of science fiction is going to look like.

Idle Thoughts on the Hard Question

The Hard Buds of SF have those of us who find the technical plausibility of fictional tales a distraction at a distinct disadvantage.  Those of us who prefer not to waste our time analyzing works on the basis of their engineering accuracy are caught in a Catch-22.  If we do ignore the concept of “hardness”, then the default status-quo, and all of its built-in assumptions and value judgements, remain in effect.  If we don’t ignore the concept, then we tacitly admit that the concept is worthy of discussion.

 *    *    *

It’s not about the works – it’s about the critical framework!  There’s a lot of plain sci-fi that I really like.  Karl Gallagher’s Torchship comes to mind.  I liked it well enough to throw an ad for its sequel into the back of one of my books.  But I didn’t like it because the engineering behind it made sense.  The engineering behind my Ikea instructions makes sense – that doesn’t make it a good read.  I enjoyed Torchship because the people made sense.  The conflict made sense.  The politics made sense.  Had the Fives Full been powered by madeupium drives or sailed across the aether propelled by the sheer force of the will of its captain I would have enjoyed it no less.

 *       *       *

Of course the chosen terms themselves connote values.  “Hard” is difficult and strong and solid.  “Soft” is easy and weak and ephemeral.  Do you want to write strong works or weak ones?  To ask the question is to answer it.  Imagine if we decided to use different language to describe the two ends of the spectrum.  Would the Hard Buds object to referring to their preferred style of fiction as “Grey” and the other end “Colorful”?  This is how even the language is corrupted to influence readers towards thinking about literal nuts and bolts of engineering instead of the figurative nuts and bolts of heroism. 

Perhaps “Plain sci-fi” versus “Majestic sci-fi” would be a more apt spectrum.  Just for kicks, I’m only going to use the terms “plain” and “majestic” throughout the rest of this piece.  As you read, think about the difference that makes. 

*       *       *

A Princess of Mars is more real to me than The Martian.  They are both great books, but one is a pointless walk through an Ikea catalog, where the other is a moving journey through life that sticks to you and changes you forever.  In the plain sci-fi tale The Martian, Mark Watney burns rocks to make water is a neat little puzzle that makes me want to be a better scientist, but in the majestic sci-fi story A Princess of Mars, how John Carter reacts to a savage world where slavery is the norm is inspirational and makes me want to be a better man.  Dejah Thoris, fierce and loyal Princess of Mars, is more real to me than the foul mouthed woman who serves as NASA’s spokeshole in The Martian.  

*       *       *

The insidious nature of the Hard Buds of SF is as subtle as it is poisonous.  Questions like, "Did they get the science right?" are phrased with an implicit understanding that answering in the negative is a mark against the work's quality.  That's an example of the underlying assumptions built into the plain sci-fi framework that most people accept without thought.  It sounds like a legitimate question.  It's easy to answer.  But it's a distraction.  It's the magician's flourishing left hand drawing your attention away while his right hand makes the virtue and heroism disappear.

 *       *       *

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying Science Man Solves Engineering Problem, but the suggestion that it represents an elevated form of the genre is laughable.  It strikes out huge swathes of human experience and presents no higher goal than “study math” and “try not to get killed”.  That’s not a step up, it’s a step backwards.

 *       *       *

Plain sci-fi encourages readers to look down at the power of math, majestic sci-fi encourages readers to look up to the higher power responsible for math.  Plain sci-fi speaks to the brain.  Majestic sci-fi speaks to the heart and soul.  As a result, it is majestic sci-fi that is more in-line with the superversive mindset than plain sci-fi.

 

 *       *       *

These observations are disjointed. With more time and motivation, they could be worked into a cohesive whole, but I just don’t care.  I’ve wasted enough time on something that, within the context of my preferred critical framework for genre fiction, just doesn’t matter.

Design Choices

My latest novel, "Sudden Rescue" was released on the Ides of March, and now that's it's been flung out into the cold, hard world of the marketplace, it's too late to make any significant changes to it. That means we can talk about a few of the decisions that went into the book.

To catch you up on the premise, this is a light romp featuring a space trucker who winds up with a space princess falling into his lap. The whole galaxy is searching for the missing princess, and the two don't know who to trust. The marriage of the princess would have sealed the only alliance capable of resisting the dread robot empire. Now, pursued across the galaxy by agents of the known empire, space pirates, and God knows who else, they have to find the one man that take them to safety.

The very first question asked by a potential reader was, "Do you describe the design of the robot places in an alien like fashion? because places were sentient machines live should not be made for human's comfort of living."

Great question. The short answer is yes. Ships manned by agents of the robot empire, the Syntharchy, can accelerate and maneuver in ways human ships cannot. The robots don't have the same g-force limitations, and this gives them an advantage. It's clear in the brief glimpse we get of the ships designed for Syntharchy use that they are not designed for human use. Not of all them are like that, though. Considerable action is spent escaping from a Syntharchy prison ship - a sort of floating concentration camp used to process captured humans and drag them back to Syntharchy space for...well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? I'll say this - the machines have a reason for hunting down and slaughtering humans. The point is that, when the action takes place on a Syntharchy ship that has lights and atmosphere and running water, it's because the Syntharchy ship is used to transport living humans.

The big thing I wanted to talk about are all of the decisions that went into the design of the cover. Some choices are obvious. The sci-fi font for the title signals the setting. The slashing use of italics signals fast moving action. The hero, the threat, and the stakes are all presented in crystal clear fashion.

A few people have commented that the cover - done by the excellent Rapha Pinheiro* - is garishly colored. Pulp Revolution, remember? That's a deliberate design choice. It’s supposed to catch the eye and stand out from the crowd. Even if people stop and think, “Well, that’s a really bright color,” at least they stopped and thought. Sometimes that half an extra second is all the bait you need to set the hook.


This is more important than you may realize.

Do you see how the hero is grasping the space princess’s wrist and pulling her to safety? That tells you exactly what lies at the heart of this tale. You have a strong hero dragging a young and somewhat naïve young girl away from danger. She has gifts of her own, and shows traits that demonstrate she is worth rescuing, but at the novel’s beginning she doesn’t really understand that grand adventures aren’t like storybooks that one can simply put down when one is tired of them. Even with a far more sophisticated understanding of the political situation related to her disappearance, she still doesn’t quite grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Meanwhile, you’ve got an older and far more rugged hero, a blue collar guy determined to do the right thing, even if the woman he’s saddled with makes doing that right thing a lot more complicated than it needs to be. He’s a gentleman, not a mushy ‘friend’ who puts her on a pedestal, and he is not above manhandling if a good manhandling is what she needs at the time.

All of this is conveyed in one sweeping glance. Will that turn off a few readers? Yes, the right kind of readers. It will turn away readers who wouldn’t enjoy the story of an inadvertent knight in leather jacketed armor saving a princess from the clutches of evil. Which is fine by me – I’m not writing for those readers, I’m writing for readers who want a little romance with their action. I’m writing for readers who want heroes who step up and do the right thing for no other reason than because it’s the right thing to do. I’m writing for readers who want to see the guy get the girl in the end – even if the girl they get isn’t the girl they thought they wanted.

If you read and enjoy stories written in the same style as the golden age of science fiction, you'd probably also enjoy this series of novellas.  These dragons are not misunderstood, they are pure destructive forces of nature than need putting down fast and hard.

I Write For Men, To Appeal to Everyone

If you want your writing to appeal to everyone, then you should write for men.

 

Consider the following:

 

When this happens...  Source.

This happens... Evidence.

Leading to this. Source.

For reasons too byzantine and varied to go into in depth here, Madison Avenue has decided to follow the false narrative that ignoring male markets is the path to financial success.  Long story short: It's a combination of women having more disposable income than they used to and an irrational belief that making your product more 'female friendly' doubles your consumer base.  Smart people assume the latter will double your income, not recognizing the truth of The Anti-Gnostic's observation that what women enter, men leave.

You may gain some short term success, but changing your product to explicitly appeal to women the strategy of eating your seed corn.  The female focus will drive off the men-folk, and all of the women that flocked to your product specifically because it represented a chance to enter a male space will follow the men to whatever space they find to replace it.

Witness the slow-motion death of ESPN and the NFL.  Their ratings are tanking, even as they've done everything from hot-pink apparel month to all-female round table discussions about the NFL.  Look at the data and you'll find the bleeding isn't coming from whatever, it's coming from men. 

Source.

Admittedly, the NFL's woes are due to other factors than their self-destructive policy of chasing female eyeballs.  Entertainment options abound, their games spread over four days, the expansion of teams has watered down the average talent on teams, and a host of other factors contribute as well.  Those factors are evident in the declining numbers among even women.  But look at the relative drop - even adjusting for per capita viewership, the decline in male viewers is larger than that for females.  The NFL is driving away their primary customer in the vain hope that the increase among secondary customers will make up the difference.

The lesson is clear:  If you want your product to appeal to men and women, don't wrap it in a pink ribbon.  Don't brag about how much women adore your product, and don't boast about how feminine friendly it is. All you'll do is drive men away.  On the flip-side, explicitly marketing your product as rugged and manly, and not really for women, represents a siren song irresistible to women.  They take that sort of talk as a challenge, and they will dive in headlong, in an effort to prove themselves as good and worthy of men.

I'd be lying if I said that I write for men out of sheer mercantile greed.  The fact is, I write for men for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with money.  Write what you know - I know men.  Write what interests you - I'm interested in male behavior and mindset and relationships.  Write what you want to read - I have no interest in female centered literature.   The fact that writing for men makes my works appealing across the divide between male and female is just a happy coincidence.

 

Want proof?  If you're man enough,

you'll enjoy my latest series of novellas:



What the Heck Does 'Pulp' Even Mean?

Inspired by (yet another) killer G+ thread kicked off by Kevyn Winkless:

https://plus.google.com/+KevynWinkless/posts/cQ9KWcezw4Y

If you're new to the Pulp Revolution, you'd do yourself right to follow Kevyn's G+ feed.  He asks cutting questions that push everyone to start rubbing their brain cells together.  In the ugly link above, he once again raises the issue of the other (lesser) Pulp movements.

The heart of the issue is that "pulp" is a really, really broad term when used in the vernacular.  If you follow the Pulp Librarian (as I do) on Twitter, you'll see all kinds of wonky stuff like mod-scene Romance comics, 1960 international nudist mags, and women with great hair fleeing gothic houses. None of that really resonates as pulp to me, but it all does fall within the broadest context of the term.

So why do I consider the Pulp Revolution a separate and distinct thing?  Because I use the term 'pulp' in the literal sense.  That is to say, in the sense of stories as told in the '30s and '40s magazines printed on no-fooling pulp paper.  Others use the term 'pulp' to mean stories that are lurid, low rent, and rely on shocking content of the sexual or violent nature to sell copies.  The current narrative holds (falsely) that the genre fiction produced during the Golden Age of Science Fiction was also lurid, low rent, and relied on shocking content to sell copies.  This has the unfortunate result of stuffing authors like Moore or St. Clair or Haggard into the same pigeon hole as "Mod Romance".

As mentioned elsewhere, most of those trading on the term 'pulp', hold to the common false narrative about what pulp means.  They get the aesthetics right, but like a Hollywood backlot set, there's nothing backing it up - they completely miss the heart and soul of the pulps.  Or they use the term 'pulp' when perhaps 'grindhouse' or 'deliberately hacky because I'm too ironic and insecure to ever admit that the writers of yesterday might have been better than the writers of today'.

Remember that the Pulp Revolution isn't just interested in selling copy - it's interested in reclaiming what was lost to the liars and cheats that buried the works that built SF/F.  You're not going to do that unless and until the culture at large understands that not all pulp is created equal, and that many of the people who claim to be 'pulp' are little better than the Talcum X's and Fauxcahontases of the SF/F genre. 

That then raises the question of whether or not using the term 'pulp' is good marketing.  We risk being pigeonholed as just another cheap attempt to cash in on the term.  Especially given that the Pulp Revolution is so keep on knocking down walls erected in the post-pulp era. 

To that I say, it's too early to tell, but you can't argue with results.

The Pulp Revolution is in its infancy.  Regardless of numbers, at this point, we've only been at this as anything other than five guys nudging each other, passing around scans of old copies, and saying, "You gotta read this, this is incredible!" for a year or so.  It's possible that the Pulp Revolution never achieves any sort of wider literary market penetration.  If we truly are full of ourselves and our writing is terrible, then we'll sputter and limp along and eventually fade away like every other attempt to reclaim the term 'pulp'.

But I don't think that's going to happen.

The Pulp Revolution is different from every other movement I've seen (and I've seen a few), specifically because of those twin towers:

1. We don't use the term as a marketing buzzword, but in its historically accurate and descriptive sense.
2. We read the old pulps, learn from them, and emulate what they WERE, not what we've been told they were by those who didn't understand them and had a vested interest in writing them out of the history of sci-fi. 

Because I've read a lot of the Pulp Revolution, and it's fantastic!  Even those authors who don't blow your doors off show a tremendous amount of promise.

The more people read the old pulps, the more they love them.  The more people read the Pulp Revolution, the more they love it.  This movement is only going to grow and get bigger until it gets too big and creators working within the Pulp Revolution are going to run out of space.  Creators are going to need to take the Pulp Revolution in new directions that we can't even imagine at this early stage.  They will have to because the movement will be so big, they'll need to separate themselves by experimenting in new and different ways.

And that itself is in keeping with the pulp (in the specific sense) mindset!  The pulp era was wild and wooly and full of experimentation.  And that freedom to create, that knocking down of walls, isn't just a way to provide interesting stories to readers - it's a way to keep the Pulp Revolution fresh where most faux-pulp movements wither on the vine.  So long as creators are hewing to the heart and soul of pulps, they'll keep pushing the boundaries and bringing more people into the fold.

How can a movement like that fail?

Devious Brains, Honest Brawn

The Castalia House blog is on fire these days.  The new writers line-up, of which my Wargame Wednesday offerings are the least, is brilliant, and the comments section has been blowing up, too.  Not just in terms of quantity, but quality as well. My own contribution to a recent conversation requires a little more space than a comment section or 140 character tweet.  The conversation in question exists below Morgan's most recent offering, a brief digression into the mind of that old fraud, Isaac Asimov, which includes the following ill-conceived bon-mot:

This double standard is very evident in sword-and-sorcery, in which the sword-hero (brawn) is pitted against the sorcery-villain (brain), with brawn winning every time. The convention is, furthermore, that brawn is always on the side of goodness and niceness (a proposition which, in real life, is very dubious…

Asimov was the sort of guy who never let slip an opportunity to remind the world how much smarter he was than everyone on it.  He was also the sort of guy who mistook his own low cunning for actual analytical ability.

First of all, Asimov wrote that line in 1985, decades after the appearance of such wildly popular characters as Vance's Cugel the Clever, Lieber's Grey Mouser, and Moorcock's Elric.  The list of cunning fantasy heroes is endless.  Then look at how many villains or monsters are composed of nothing but brawn.  Massive and stupid trolls and ogres and thugs are a staple of sword and sorcery.  To suggest that brawn is always on the side of goodness and niceness betrays a degree of ignorance about the subject matter that would send less intelligent men running away from broad, sweeping generalizations.  Not Asimov, though - he was too smart to let his ignorance get in the way of his opining.

That beef is low hanging fruit, though.  Exposing Asimov's ignorance and pretentiousness is no real accomplishment.  Instead, let's take a few moments to actually analyze how and why the  sword-hero (brawn) is pitted against the sorcery-villain (brain), with brawn winning every time survived for so long as a staple of sword and sorcery.  Instead of playing the role of Secret King who knows what's good for everyone, and why what they like is bad for them, let's stop think about why that idea resonates with readers.

We'll start with an easy exercise:

You know who likes to get stabbed in the back by a friend?

No one.

You know who likes to know where they stand with people?

Every one.

Now take two heroes, one selfish and dishonest, the other loyal and trustworthy.  Guess which one most readers would rather spend time with?  If you guessed the loyal and trustworthy one, congratulations on being a decent human being.

(Don't sperg out on me here.  Yes, sometimes a venal hero who engages in trickery can make for a find change of pace...if done well, and if he pits his talents against foes even more vile than he.  We're talking rules, not exceptions.)

The bigger point here is that normal people like good guys.  They like to see the good guys win.  They like to see themselves in the place of the good guy.  They like to be reminded that good guys don't finish last.  That good guys do come out ahead in the end.

Normal people live in a very complicated world where that doesn't always happen.  It seems that the good guys, honest and forthright, constantly get shafted by the lying duplicitous bastards of the world.  They see that punk in the low-slung ratrod zipping in and out of traffic and almost causing six wrecks two minutes before they get dinged by a speeding ticket for going 37 in a 30MPH zone.  They watch that conniving bitch in Marketing get promoted over the diligent gal who stays late and pulls her own weight.  They stand by helpless as petty bureaucrats sell their nation out for a few "feel good" photo-ops with third world invaders and preach tolerance and love even as their daughters are assaulted in the street on the regular by said immigrants.

They chafe at such indignities.  They yearn for truth in a world of lies.  They burn for justice delivered immediately and without prejudice.

When people like that crack open a book, they don't want to read about that cunning wizard who finally gave that big bully with the sword what for.  They don't want to vicariously experience a bureaucrat saving the day by "forgetting" to file important paperwork.  While they might appreciate the brainy programmer stopping the alien invasion with a virus, but they love the redneck pilot who kamikazes his jet straight up the exhaust port of the city-sized mothership.

Liked and respected versus loved and admired.
Guess which one sells more books?

And that, my friends, is the critical point that Asimov misses.  He can't see past his own ego.  He thinks that readers burn for vengeance on the grade school bully, and that what readers really want is a smart hero who uses complicated plans built on layers of deceit and obfuscation to thwart the plans of simpler and more forthright villains.

Normal people don't think that way.  Normal people just want to grab the lady behind the counter at the DMV who smugly announces that they don't have the right safety check form and that they'll have to take the Form 88A-Pre-Owned back to the car dealership and get the Form 88A-Used and shake that helmet haired old prune until their registration falls out.  They want to grab their kid's vice-principal and explain to him WITH THEIR FISTS that biting a Pop-Tart into a pistol shape in no way violates a Zero Tolerance policy.  They want simple and honest solutions to the complex and inscrutable rules and regulations of modern life.

They want the simple virtue of a steel blade well wielded to triumph over decades of deceit and cunning.  They want a lifetime of hard training and sweat to vanquish decades of conniving chicanery.  They want simple solutions presented by the good guys - guys like them - to win out over petty and vainglorious plots.

They want justice.  They want honesty.  They want loyalty.  They want all the things that they don't get in the real world.

Most of what I've laid out here is obvious.  Normal people can go their whole lives without thinking about these things, because they don't have to - they feel them deep within their bones.  A longing for honesty and justice is part and parcel of the western civilization psyche.  It's so natural as to go without saying.

But a guy like Asimov - so desperate to be the smartest man in the room - has to announce that the vague longing people have for simplicity and virtue is actually a very bad thing, and if you'll just hear him out, he can explain why honesty is stupid.  That Asimov sees himself as allied with the schemers and deceivers tells you everything you need to know about him.  How much trust to put into the words of a man who sympathizes with the liars and connivers is up to you.

My Current Writing Project

The Pulp Revolution loves itself some pulpy fantasy and science fiction.  It's currently undergoing a long and protracted conversation about where exactly the genre took a left turn for the worse.  There are a lot of theories and finger pointing, with some rather elegant defenses of particular styles.  Loud mouth zealots make grand, sweeping gestures, then retract a bit when others point out exceptions.  Writers and editors of yesteryear get smeared and then have their reputations rehabilitated.  For example, Karl Gallagher's erudite analysis of Campbellian sci-fi softened my stance on Campbell.

With the exception of the New Wave authors.  Aside from a few gems in the cesspool, nobody likes those guys.

Of course, as readers and open minded sorts, the Pulp Revolution looks outward and analyzes information from other sources.  Whether it's showing respect to somebody like Rick Stump for his excellent analysis of why Hollywood can't get Conan right, or mocking the mockable mockeries of analysis like this prize pig, everything is fair game and nothing is off limits.

A number of commenters have pointed fingers at Damon Knight, the man who founded the SFWA and who is most famous for writing a story that ends with a man shouting that "To Serve Man" is a cookbook.  I hesitate to name names, because I'll forget to mention one or get those mentioned in trouble, but "Cirsova" Alexander and Nathan Housely are the primary culprits here.

Intrigued, I started doing some legwork, and everything fits together nicely nicely, thank you very much.  Damon Knight was a mid-tier author who bullied his way to the top through hubris and vindictiveness.  He did everything he could to assume command of the genre from writing amateur and biased reviews (Really, Damon?  Blish is a great writer and Robert E. Howard a hack?  Yagottabekiddingme,) to starting workshops to teach gullible writers "How it's really done", to founding the SFWA and conveniently serving as its first president, the better to determine who really counts as a 'the right kind of author'.  Of all of the gatekeepers who have made science fiction worse over the years, he was the original and so far as I can tell, the worst of the lot.

I started compiling notes and putting the pieces together, and have been forced to change directions a few times during this process.  While my overall thesis has not changed, certain pieces needed to be shuffled around, and looked at in new contexts.  As new information comes in, and as the conversations continue, I expect other changes to occur as well.  I will probably even post a few chapters here for open criticism and stress testing before declaring it ready for prime-time.

Right now the analysis clocks in at about 8,000 words, and it looks like I'm about half-way done.  So expect a quick read sometime in April/May.  Right now, I'm not sure where it will wind up.  Stay tuned, I'll keep you posted.