Pixel Scroll 10/17/16 Scrolls From Topographic Pixels

(1) TAKE NO PRISONERS OF ZENDA. Ian Sales’ title “When I read a story I skip the explanations” introduces an extremely skillful dissection of a certain approach to science fictional worldbuilding that Sales compares to Ruritanian romance.

That’s the essence of Ruritanian science fiction. It is genre fiction which builds an invented setting out of elements which might as well not be invented. The labels are different but the objects are the same, or fulfil the same function. It’s not a failure of imagination, because imagination doesn’t feature in the process. And it’s only a failure of craft if the author is attempting something more than Ruritanian sf. If all they want is a science-fictional setting the reader can parse, one that’s uncoupled from the real world but close enough to it that few explanations are required, then if they’ve produced Ruritanian sf they’ve succeeded. Info-dumps are a given, but they’re usually “historical”, inasmuch as they attempt to give the invented world solidity and depth through exposition – but shifting the burden of exposition onto the setting’s own narrative only demonstrates how little exposition the tropes in the story actually need.

Needless to say, I think such forms of science fiction are low on invention and make poor use of the tools at the genre’s disposal. They can be entertaining, there’s no doubt about that; but their uncritical use of tropes, and their failure to interrogate the form, means they have little or nothing to add to the genre conversation.

(2) KEEP TRACK OF YOUR SPOONS. Andrea seeks the reasons she’s not writing more reviews in “Anger, Anxiety, and Art” at the Little Red Reviewer.

I know what I write on this blog doesn’t matter. I know none of this counts as “writing” or as anything, really.  But in my mind, I put a lot of energy into this.  I like pretty metaphors, ornamented sentences. I like to write book reviews and other articles that I am proud of.  It’s not art, by a long shot, but I am creating something out of nothing. for the purposes of this particular blog post, let’s call what I do here art.  And art requires mental energy. or at least it does for me.

So, where were all my spoons going?  And was there any way to get them back? And thus, we get to the why.

(3) ONE MORE THAN FIVE. Nerds of a Feather has the perfect pairing of feature concept with an interesting author: “6 Books with Julie Czerneda”.

  1. What upcoming book you are really excited about? The next one Ben Aaronovitch writes in his Rivers of London series. Our travelling offspring lent me the existing books and I gobbled them up, despite trying to ration myself. They are fun, original, and yes, feel a bit Pratchett (wistful sigh) in the best way. Can’t wait to dive back in!

(4) VANISHING POINT. Camestros Felapton is keeping an eye on the internet’s newest knowledge source: “Voxopedia: where information about women goes to be erased”.

The erasure of women’s achievements in science is a known phenomenon, but it is rare that you get to see it happen in such a simple and direct way. Over at our new favourite train-wreck, Vox Day had been busy quite literally erasing women’s contribution to science….

(5)  A MONTH WITH NO FIVES. Rocket Stack Rank’s ”October 2016 Ratings” covers 51 stories, but none of them warranted the highest score of 5, which means ‘Hugo worthy.”

(6) BINARY CHOICE. Matthew B.J. Delaney says characters count in “Characters or Plot, Which Is More Important?” at Fantasy Book Critic.

The 5 highest grossing films of all time are heavy plot, light character:
Avatar 
– Titanic 
– Star Wars: The Force Awakens 
– Jurassic World 
– The Avengers.

These are all entertaining movies dominated by things happening. The characters are interchangeable pieces to throw explosions or dinosaurs, or sinking ships at. They don’t really matter. People don’t walk around reciting quotes from any of these films, because characters are made memorable by the things they say. And there are no truly memorable characters in any of these movies.

Memorable scenes, yes, memorable quotes, no.

On the other hand, character movies are filled with amazing lines.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Here’s looking at you kid.

These are the kind of things that characters who really blow your hair back say. The cool comebacks and one liners you wish you could have used on anyone who pushed you around or made you fall in love. These are character driven quotes, and the top IMDB highest rated films of all time are filled with them…

(7) NO FEAR. I would need to excerpt about eight paragraphs of Ann Leckie’s “On Blacklisting” to convey how many aspects of this topic she deals with. That’s why you should just click through and read it, eh?

I’ll be honest, I am not down for calls to close anyone out of the field for bad behavior. I mean, for myself, bad enough, or bad in specific ways, and yeah, I don’t want to work with you. Maybe quite a few people don’t. But it’s not my call to make for anyone but me, nor should it be. No one should have that power, to shut anyone out of SFF. Behave badly enough and quite a few editors will prefer not to work with you–but that’s not the same as a field-wide blacklist, and I don’t think there should be one. Ever. Each editor gets to make the call for their venue, end of story. And yes, there will be editors who are all about the purity of art apart from artist, editors who don’t care one way or the other about kittens. You may disagree with those editors’ decisions, but they get to make that choice. You may prefer on balance not to work with such editors–again, that’s your call. You choose where to submit, and you get to have whatever reasons you want for that choice.

I am down for being open about serious problems, though. Someone who’s a really bad actor, who’s strewn destruction in their wake? Yeah, let’s know about that. We can all make our decisions about how to react to that, going forward. Concealing things to whisper networks and private chats just lets the bad actor continue to harm the unwarned.

(8) BELLY UP. This weekend Utah regional publisher Jolly Fish Press announced they are going out of business.

Our Journey Has Come to a Close

It is with deep sadness that we are announcing the closing of Jolly Fish Press (JFP). For nearly five years, JFP has been a beacon of inspiration to many in the publishing industry; we’ve opened up doors to authors, editors, designers, publicists, and illustrators alike, providing them with a platform on which their dreams of establishing themselves in the industry could be realized….

After a long process of seeking investors who believe in our company and what we aim to achieve, we have, unfortunately, failed to secure the funds necessary to grow and move the company forward. While JFP has great propensity to becoming a serious competitor in the industry, the lack of financial investment prohibits us from reaching our potential. We have approached the point where we can no longer sustain our business.

JFP is ceasing business effective October 31, 2016. All rights to our titles will be reverted by October 31, 2016. Book production will stop effective immediately.

JFP’s authors included Johnny Worthen and Jenniffer Wardell.

(9) STUART OBIT. TheRecord.com profiled the late Ruth Ann Stuart (1964-2016), who died of brain cancer on August 12, in “Lifetimes: By day an insurance worker, by night a fantasy fiction writer”.

Ruth Stuart worked in insurance, the past 10 years as quality assurance auditor for Manulife Financial. Her job required a no-nonsense approach in the anything but lighthearted world of insurance. By night, Ruth cast off her serious side and delved into the world of fantasy writing as an author, mentor, editor and inspiration to everyone in the speculative fiction community. She even dabbled in writing eroticism according to her friend and editor, Julie Czerneda.

These were two very different sides to a woman who had so many friends that while in hospital suffering through the final stages of brain cancer, Ruth’s room was constantly jammed packed with visitors, not to mention the steady stream of phone calls and text messages. Nurses suggested they install a revolving door in her room.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born October 17, 1948  — Margot Kidder

(11) APPLYING CODES OF CONDUCT AT CONS. Alexandra Erin suggests where to strike the balance, in “Priorities: Justice vs. Safety in Convention Culture”.

One comment I made in one of my recent posts that has attracted a certain amount of skepticism was my endorsement of a con culture that focuses on safety rather than justice in conflict resolutions. “How can you have safety without justice?” is one typical response. “So justice is a bad thing now?” is another.

Well, justice is most assuredly not a bad thing.

But justice in the sense of criminal justice or what we might call retributive justice is not the most pressing concern of a convention’s code of conduct, nor should it be the focus of a convention’s safety or security team.

Let me put it to you this way: how many comic, literary, or media conventions have you been to or heard of, that you would trust with the weighty responsibility of meting out justice? How many of them do you think have the people, expertise, or time and resources to serve out justice in a meaningful sense?

(12) BURTON BEFORE BEETHOVEN. The Los Angeles Times says symphony-goers have something to look forward to: “’A Freak in Burbank’: Alex Theater Concert to Feature Composer’s Paean to Tim Burton”.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard are looking to start off an upcoming concert on a more eccentric note.

One of Beethoven’s most celebrated works, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” will be the headlining piece at the chamber’s concert at the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Oct. 29. However, the night will open with a roughly 10-minute work called “A Freak in Burbank,” a composition making its West Coast debut and dedicated to the legendary and eccentric filmmaker Tim Burton.

(13) SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT. Crooked Timber recommends “A Science Fiction Tasting Menu For The As Yet Uninitiated”.

Hors d’oeuvre—short stories available for free or cheap download

If you don’t like any of these, you won’t appreciate anything that follows

E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops – Dystopia perfectly imagined, in 1909.

William Tenn, The Liberation of Earth – All you need know about war

James Blish, Surface Tension – What imagination can do

Frederik Pohl, The tunnel under the world – Life inside Facebook

(14) TREEHOUSE OF HORROR. A.V. Club got an advance peek — The Simpson’s evil scheme to reach 600 episodes lands in the Treehouse of Horror”.

The promotional materials, including the usually amusing snarky screener announcement sent to critics (or “critics” as such people are called within), hyped the return of still-hotly-debated Homer nemesis Frank Grimes, or at least the poor guy’s ghost. And the opening segment sees the Simpsons in costume, buying Christmas trees on Halloween, as Homer says, “Because in America, everything’s way too early.” (He’s wearing an “Ivanka 2028” campaign button, because nothing matters in America at this point.) There, they’re confronted not only by the ghost of Grimes (“Who?,” asks Homer, to the ghostly Grimes’ chagrin), Sideshow Bob, Kang (or Kodos), and that leprechaun who tells Ralph to burn things, who proclaim themselves the family’s four evil nemeses before being immediately slaughtered by Maggie. (What looked like her Chaplin costume turns out to be her old Alex DeLarge costume, complete with sword cane.) Adios, Frank Grimes—you were used for a throwaway gag, as is your destiny.

The pieces that follow all partake of the same strengths and weaknesses.

(15) GORMAN OBIT. Todd Mason wrote an appreciation of the late writer, “Ed Gorman (1941-2016)”, who died October 14.

The first fanzine I read was an issue of Science Fiction Review, a magazine edited and published by the late Richard (Dick) Geis, and that issue included among much else a bit of autobiography by Algis Budrys, a fiction-writer, editor and critic who has had rather a large influence on me; along with that essay, an interview, conducted by an impressed fan of his (and of other contributors to the literary legacy of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback line), Edward Gorman. So that’s how I was introduced to Ed, in 1978.

Like Budrys, or Geis, only perhaps even more so, Ed went ahead and did things that he clearly thought needed doing, not only establishing himself as a freelance writer, but launching the magazine Mystery Scene and engaged in the launch of the book-publishing house, Five Star, which have both done notable service to the field of crime fiction and beyond. He co-edited two (or, arguably, three) best crime fiction of the year annual series, and wrote well and often brilliantly in at least the fields of crime fiction, fantastic fiction (particularly horror), western fiction, and historical fiction. His editorial work has been impressive, beyond the magazine and annuals, often assembling key anthologies of crime fiction and more, not least with The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction and The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, and such notable compilations as the nonfiction collection The Big Book of Noir and the interview collections Speaking of Murder and Speaking of Murder 2. 

(16) DO WE BLAME ASIMOV? In a video at Business Insider, “Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why killer robots don’t scare him”.

Movies would have you believe that killer robots  are the inevitable future of technology gone awry — but Neil deGrasse Tyson isn’t afraid, here’s why.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Bonnie McDaniel, Mackenzie, Martin Morse Wooster, James Davis Nicoll, and Dave Doering for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jim Henley and Simon Bisson.]

93 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/17/16 Scrolls From Topographic Pixels

  1. the Horatio Hornblower in Space

    Well, but the most obvious examples–Harrington and Leary–actually do spend a significant amount of effort in world building

  2. Mike: from what I hear, “reality” TV at least has a continuing plot line. (“Watch us stress these people week after week! Which one are you cheering for?”) GaL has none of that; the performers are anonymous and appear in a series of disconnected acts (tied-together half-naked knife fights, octogenarians with pugil sticks, tightrope walking over a tub of piranhas surrounded by hecklers with things to throw) that are chosen in advance, then cast a few minutes before the performance. (i.e., there’s no stimulus/response; it’s just a question of how ]entertaining[ the producer can make the bloodflow.) It isn’t even Roman games as they were, just the 1950’s Hollywood view of them.

    @Greg: I think you’ve missed the point of the story. (Comment here because I’m not interested in creating a Google profile to post there; rotated because I hope somebody else will look and comment without preconceptions.) Yrnu jnf fghpx va “nf jvgubhg, fb jvguva”, abg frrvat gung arvgure “snyyvat va ybir” abe qvfcryyvat gur jvgpu’f phefr unf nygrerq gur grzcre sbe juvpu gur zna jnf phefrq. Gur jvgpu pna vzcbfr n genafsbezngvba va gur ubcr gung vg jvyy or n yrneavat rkcrevrapr ohg pna’g qverpgyl svk n qvfgrzcrerq zvaq; V guvax Yrnu pbzrf gb haqrefgnaq guvf jvgubhg univat gb qrznaq gung gur jvgpu fcryy vg bhg. V qba’g guvax gur xavirf ner n pbyyrpgvba bs phg-bss eryngvbafuvcf — ps Cengpurgg’f pbzzragf ba gur ivyyntref’ zvforyvrs gung jvgpurf ner fgrevyr (qrfcvgr gur rivqrapr bs Anaal Btt); V guvax gurl’er jung gur jvgpu unf yrnearq fur \pna/ qb — gurer ner cyragl bs erprag rknzcyrf bs gur zrzr gung haqrefgnaqvat bar’f yvzvgf vf cneg bs orpbzvat noyr gb qb zber.

    I am troubled by Erin’s equation of justice with retribution. Justice is making judgments to find a balance; the discussion that concoms don’t want to be involved in retribution is a strawman. And concoms do have to exercise judgment; no matter how carefully a CoC is drawn, there will be edge cases.

  3. Tom Galloway

    11) Sorry, but if I’m reading Erin’s piece (and I did go read the whole thing) correctly, she seems to be advocating for no investigation/consideration of complaints other than “does the complainer feel unsafe?”. And that frankly worries the hell out of me.

    While I agree that some of what she says can be seen as pushing in that direction, I think that “advocating for no investigation/consideration” is a rather uncharitable interpretation.

    The point here isn’t that any vague “I feel sort of uncomfortable” should get the other party kicked out with zero investigation. The point is that the emphasis should be on a) responding quickly enough for it to matter during the con, and b) making the con secure and pleasant for attendees. This should be valued above following a strict presumption of innocence, and above finding a reaction meant to be “pedagogical” for the offender.

    Two quotes:

    A convention’s commitment to safety means they will try first to prevent conflict, then to diffuse it, then to resolve it. Punishment, if it happens, is incidental. Even if an action is interpreted as punishing, the so-called punishment is not the point. The harm reduction or risk mitigation is.

    and

    Conventions have a duty to provide a measure of safety. They have neither the duty nor even the means to provide justice. Trying to act as a court system is how they wind up with uneven punishments, complaints that stretch on for years, etc.

    With that said, there is a risk that too-swift judgment will lead to flimsy complaints being taken more seriously than they deserve. And I kind of feel that Alexandra Erin underestimates the danger of that.

    On the other hand, much of what Erin says is actually an argument for less severe responses. While Erin doesn’t specifically comment on it, the goal of avoiding conflict between people can often be accomplished by something like “OK, you stay on the first floor and you stay on the second floor”. That’s easier than investigating the history of the conflict and find an appropriate punishment for whatever the original aggressor did to start the conflict.

  4. @Chip Hitchcock

    I think you’ve missed the point of the story. (Comment here because I’m not interested in creating a Google profile to post there; rotated because I hope somebody else will look and comment without preconceptions.)

    Thanks! I think I see the key point I missed now. I’ll update my review.

    You shouldn’t have to have a Google Profile to leave a comment. LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, and OpenId should also work.

  5. @13: Decades ago, one of my favorite anthologies for an intro-to-SF course was Those Who Can, edited by Robin Scott Wilson, partly for the quality of the stories and partly for the accompanying essays by the writers. One of the standouts, pedagogically and artistically, is Damon Knight’s “Masks”–artistically for its management of various technical aspects of narrative and pedagogically for the author’s explanation in “An Annotated ‘Masks'” of exactly what he was up to in this story and in story-in-general. Pohl’s “Day Million” was a bonus for its (for the time) deliberate destabilizing of expectations and its metafictional presentation.

    I’ve now been out of the classroom for longer than I was in it, and there are certainly contemporary anthologies that can do the same job as TWC, but even forty years after its devising, I suspect that one could go a long way toward explaining the difference between SF-in-movies/TV/comics and the written variety with this one volume. (The contributor list is even pretty diverse, including Williamson, Delany, Keyes, Russ, Silverberg, Le Guin, Knight, Wilhelm, and Pohl.)

    A side note–the Crooked Timber post mentions some conference participants’ view of the relevance of SF as “a guide to the future,” which even Back In The Day many of us saw as a kind of distraction, or at least an exaggeration of one of the genre’s promient traits. If I were asked about the extraliterary utility of SF, I would emphasize not so much its predictive power as its power to shake up viewpoints, to encourage the rearrangement of assumptions and expectations. That was one of the things about “Day Million” I enjoyed: watching students having to wrap their heads around some notions that back then were pretty challenging-to-the-conventional. (Some John Varley stories were also good in that department.) Judging from recent intra-field culture wars, SF is still doing that job.

    BTW, @Chip Hitchcock: “Ancient rodomontade like Stapledon” is not only historically central to SF as a mother lode of “ideas,” his work remains as imaginatively potent as Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (which sticks in my memory many decades after I first read it). Stapledon might not be the first writer I would offer a written-SF neophyte, but he would absolutely be on the list for a reader who wanted to engage the field as more than passing entertainment. Just as I would have The Duchess of Malfi waiting for someone who was really smitten with Shakespeare.

  6. Well, but the most obvious examples–Harrington and Leary–actually do spend a significant amount of effort in world building

    But it’s all off-the-rack world building. The technical infodumps are all to explain why space warfare works like the Age of Sail. Which seems to be what Sales is getting at here:

    It is genre fiction which builds an invented setting out of elements which might as well not be invented. The labels are different but the objects are the same, or fulfil the same function.

  7. @Dann

    I didn’t see anything from Daily Science Fiction at RSR. A pity.

    I enjoy a great many of those stories. Although they are definitely well below novella/novelette length.

    We don’t review stories from Daily Science Fiction because they’re too short (max of 1500 words). As a general rule, the shorter a story, the harder it is to make it good. Under 1,000 words, it’s hard to even make it work as a story. I visualize writing 365 reviews, giving half of them 1 or 2 stars and recommending fewer than ten of them. Lots of work for very little return.

    What could work would be if someone else read them all and pointed me at one or two a month that were especially good. The only real way to expand beyond the 11 magazines we’re doing now would be to have partners who read the smaller magazines and filter out the very best.

  8. @Greg

    Thanks very much. I can’t say that I read every DSF, but I read a bunch of them. Your point about length impacting quality is well received. There are a bunch of short ones that are enjoyable, but not particularly deep.

    Of course, personal taste can also be an issue. There was one recently about the rules of being a hero that hit me pretty hard, but it may not work for everyone.

    Are you asking for a DSF filter?

    Regards,
    Dann

  9. @Dann

    Of course, personal taste can also be an issue. There was one recently about the rules of being a hero that hit me pretty hard, but it may not work for everyone.

    Yeah, that one has the problem that it isn’t a story. The only thing it has going for it is the emotional punch in rule #5. Otherwise the rules are fairly obvious and the “dialogue” is rather clumsy. Something I learned the first month of writing reviews was that it’s very, very easy to overrate a story just because it makes you cry.

    Are you asking for a DSF filter?

    At this point, I think I’d like for more people to informally point out good stories in venues outside our core 11. Novellas and anthologies too.

  10. @Greg

    Fair enough. Although my reading plate is pretty full, I may spend some more time with RSR to see what your filters are. If I see something, I’ll try to pass it along.

    VBR,
    Dann

  11. @Sean O’Hara: Very much agree on the Honor Harrington and Daniel Leary stories being examples of ruritarian sf. Drake is actually an interesting case. Many of his sf stories are ruritarian, with both the Leary series and the Hammer series being prime examples.

    But to me, the Hammer stories feel much more worthwhile. The only way that Drake could be published was by writing sf, and the Hammer stories are the result of him trying to make sense of his experiences of Vietnam. As such they have an emotional impact and resonance that is missing from much of his later work.

  12. @Dann

    Fair enough. Although my reading plate is pretty full, I may spend some more time with RSR to see what your filters are. If I see something, I’ll try to pass it along.

    Much appreciated!

  13. Sean O’Hara: But it’s all off-the-rack world building. The technical infodumps are all to explain why space warfare works like the Age of Sail. Which seems to be what Sales is getting at here

    The problem is that he claims that “Ruritanian SF is comfort reading, it is unadventurous and unlikely to promote critical discussion.”

    Which is just plain false. Sure, some of what he calls “Ruritanian SF” fits that description — but some of it contains significant character and/or plot development which touches on deep, thought-provoking themes, and can definitely promote critical discussion.

    Based on what he says, he seems to place primary value on development of big sciencey concepts and very little on plot and character — which is more than a bit ironic, given that the vast majority of his Apollo Quartet consists of actual history and very little of it of science he’s invented.

  14. Back to the Future implies that Marty McFly inspired Chuck Berry to invent rock’n’roll on November 12, 1955. But according to Wikipedia, Berry’s “Maybellene,” said to be one of the first rock’n’roll songs, was recorded in May 1955 and had hit #1 on Billboard’s R&B chart by September 1955. So Chuck was already doing very well by himself when he got that fictional phone call. 🙂

  15. I’d call Goblin King more or less Ruritanian. There are SF elements, but they have hardly any impact.

    But to say that it doesn’t promote critical discussion? Rather the opposite.

  16. JJ on October 18, 2016 at 1:41 pm said:

    Based on what he says, he seems to place primary value on development of big sciencey concepts and very little on plot and character — which is more than a bit ironic, given that the vast majority of his Apollo Quartet consists of actual history and very little of it of science he’s invented.

    To be fair to Sales, based on his recent Age of Discord series he seems happy enough to write what he calls Ruritanian SF so I suspect his position is more nuanced than you suggest.

  17. @Rob Thornton
    Back to the Future implies that Marty McFly inspired Chuck Berry to invent rock’n’roll on November 12, 1955. But according to Wikipedia, Berry’s “Maybellene,” said to be one of the first rock’n’roll songs, was recorded in May 1955 and had hit #1 on Billboard’s R&B chart by September 1955. So Chuck was already doing very well by himself when he got that fictional phone call.

    Well, if you’re gonna fact-check the movie, you might also note that DeLoreans can’t actually travel through time.

  18. That and Marty McFly clearly switched timelines/parallel universes, so maybe Chuck Berry had a later start to his music career in that one… =)

  19. @Karl-Johan: So, reading from either direction, we still think (1) is full of it. And we conclude that if people can read it from 180 degrees off, it’s not well-expressed. Needs another rewrite. If he’d meant the sort of stuff @Sean O’Hara said, he should have said it more plainly. I understood Sean perfectly and largely agree, and might inquire “Like Nutty Nuggets?”

    But I still agree with @JJ (and me): what he seems to be objecting to is not enough keen hi-tech future whiz-bang things. But if you spend all your time on those, there’s no room for character development, complicated/interesting plot, or anything that “promotes critical discussion”. It’s just tech porn.

    And it’ll end up being wrong: to badly misquote Fred Pohl, lots of people predicted the automobile, how many predicted the traffic jam?

    Bah. This is too badly-written even for File 770 to argue properly about!

  20. @Hampus Eckerman

    I’d call Goblin King more or less Ruritanian. There are SF elements, but they have hardly any impact.

    Do you mean “The Goblin Emperor?” (I’ll assume you do.)

    I do think it’s useful to have a term to refer to SFF where the functioning of the magic/technology isn’t important to the story. I’ve been calling those “situational SFF” stories, in that they have an SFF setting, but it’s not essential that they do. However, in that case, it isn’t necessary that the magic/technology correspond to something in our world; it’s only necessary that the plot doesn’t depend on it.

    So if a story takes place on a rotating space station, and a key part of the plot is that there is zero gravity at the axis, then that story would not be “Ruritanian.” On the other hand, if the hero mentions always getting sick when he crosses the axis and occasionally talks about the curving floors, but if the whole story might otherwise have taken place in a big building on Earth, then it would be Ruritanian.

    In that case, “The Goblin Emperor” would definitely qualify, as would most works of SFF in the last few years. I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with that, though. I suppose the problem is that “Ruritanian Romance” was coined to disparage that sort of story, but that was long ago. Anyway, it does point to a distinction in types of story that’s probably useful to make.

  21. Today’s Meredith Moment:

    Emmi Itäranta’s Tiptree-, Clarke-, PKD-, and Compton Crook-nominated Memory of Water is on sale for $2.99 on Amazon, Nook, and Kobo, and possibly other platforms.

  22. @Russell Letson: I won’t argue Stapledon’s influence, but your metaphor confirms my argument; the list being discussed was presented as starters (for which ancestral work isn’t useful if it’s unreadable) rather than what-to-read-next.

  23. “And it’ll end up being wrong: to badly misquote Fred Pohl, lots of people predicted the automobile, how many predicted the traffic jam?”

    Traffic Jem – Where Vehicles Learn About War

  24. @Bill

    It always bothered me that Marty McFly was supposedly the source of rock’n’roll, so when you wished Chuck Berry a happy birthday, I did a little research. I thought it was nice to know that Berry was already rocking before Marty arrived in 1955.

  25. ‘Ruritanian SF’ seems rather like what C.S. Lewis called the work of ‘displaced persons’ (i.e. stories set in an SF situation which could just as well be set in our world). He did, though, distinguish between stories which could be transposed to our world without any serious change, and those which, though not essentially science-fictional, do need to be set in another world or the future to free them from baggage that a present-day setting would involve. (The example he gives of the latter is John Colliers’ Tom’s A-Cold.) I can’t work out quite when Lewis’s essay was written, but at least it implies that this sort of thing goes back quite a long way.

  26. @Rob — no problem, and no offense taken. And none meant as well, my point being that BTTF is an escapist movie which shouldn’t be deconstructed too deeply, and it could have been expressed a little less snarkily. And congrats to Mr. Berry for having been rocking for seven years longer than my AARP-eligible self has been alive.

    (and I haven’t seen the movie since its release — but my recollection is that it is implied only that McFly is the inspiration only for Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” not his whole oeurve, much less all of Rock n Roll. Is that correct?)

  27. @Bill – Thanks, I didn’t mean to offend either. 🙂

    I have seen Back To The Future more than a few times, and here’s what I recall:

    The prom band’s guitarist gets wounded for some reason, which forces Marty McFly to take up the guitar. While Marty is playing, the guitarist calls his cousin Chuck and says something like “you know that new sound you’re looking for? take a listen.” Then the guitarist holds up the phone so Chuck can hear the band.

    So if my memory is correct, Chuck is supposed to have picked up the “new sound” (not just “Johnny B. Goode”) from Marty. I felt that was a little disrespectful to Chuck Berry (of course there is a paradox/temporal loop combo if you adhere to the movie’s internal logic).

    But it’s just a movie. So no worries!

  28. Bill: “BTTF is an escapist movie which shouldn’t be deconstructed too deeply”

    This sentiment always gets my back up. Probably unfairly, because it is possible to overthink anything (I demonstrate that often), but the idea that light entertainment cannot be critiqued, examined or deconstructed because it’s light/populist/whatever still troubles me, because on average, *more* people see light entertainment than deep meaningful stuff. Which means that it has opportunities to reach people that other forms don’t have, and opportunities to influence societal attitudes.

    Think about the “stalking is love” trope lately discussed, which shows up in even more frivolous entertainment still but was pointed out to have actual detrimental effect.

  29. But the thing nobody seems to remember about BACK TO THE FUTURE is that Marty is shown as a fan of rock & roll, including the historical variety. When he played at the prom, he was playing stuff he remembered, from Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix (and maybe a little Who, by way of Elvis Costello). In other words, he was playing Berry’s music to Berry, who is then inspired to be Chuck Berry.

    Chuck Berry is his own grandpaw! (It sounds silly, I know.)

  30. My first problem with (6) is that he doesn’t use the adjusted-for-inflation version of the list, which is going to give a better picture of what audiences like because it provides an apples-to-apples comparison. By that standard, the top five films are:

    Gone With the Wind
    Avatar
    Star Wars
    Titanic
    The Sound of Music

    My second problem is that the idea that “plot” and “character” are two separate, mutually-exclusive categories of quality that can be measured individually and that must be prioritized by a writer. Whereas in fact, good plots reveal character and good characters drive the plot. “Star Wars” wouldn’t happen without Luke Skywalker’s restless drive for adventure and a life beyond farming, or Leia’s stoic determination for justice and freedom for the galaxy, or Han Solo’s conflicted, messy heroism. And the most important character moments in “Titanic” happen when the crisis of the sinking vessel reveal the true nature of the people on board.

    My third problem is that he denigrates the movies he does pick as having interchangeable and boring characters, when they’re frequently big and obvious personalities playing out in operatic intensity on the screen. Does anyone really think that you could just swap out Kylo Ren for any bad guy and his actions in the third act would have equal weight? Does anyone really feel like Bruce Banner’s line, “I’m always angry,” would be just as good if it was Captain Marvel saying, “Shazam!” to transform himself into a superhero? Even “Avatar”, which had characters I’d maybe describe as simplistic, had the wonderful scene where the lead expressed pure, unadulterated joy at his borrowed body’s new legs.

    My fourth problem is pretty much everything else he says. 🙂

  31. @ Lenora — All I can offer back is to quote Nick Carlton: “Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.”

  32. Bill, that strikes me as a remarkably dismissive and silencing response to a thoughtful and thought-provoking post which deserved better.

    Kind of the way that “shut up and just enjoy the movie” is the universal response to women pointing out harmful, misogynist tropes in mainstream entertainment.

  33. Does anyone actually know where that Pohl quote about traffic jams comes from? I’ve been trawling & all I can ever find is “once remarked” “is fond of having said” “thus spake” yadda yadda.

  34. This sentiment always gets my back up. Probably unfairly, because it is possible to overthink anything (I demonstrate that often), but the idea that light entertainment cannot be critiqued, examined or deconstructed because it’s light/populist/whatever still troubles me, because on average, *more* people see light entertainment than deep meaningful stuff.

    My problem with analysis/deconstruction is that the people doing it tend to present it as the interpretation, not an interpretation. To the interpreter, it is exposing obvious truths. To a third-party observer it is very obvious that it is being viewed through a specific ideological lens. (When you have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.)

  35. Oh dear. The Nick Carlton quote is a funny line from “The Big Chill”, and I invoked it in the belief that it expressed humorously the idea that in some cases, it is entirely appropriate to ignore logical and factual problems a work may have and to simply enjoy it for what it is — escapist entertainment. I did not intend to be dismissive.

    In an attempt to respond seriously to a “thoughtful and thought-provoking post which deserved better,” I’ll say that I agree with the sentiment that “light entertainment cannot be critiqued, examined or deconstructed because it’s light/populist/whatever” is wrong. But it’s also something of a straw man, because I didn’t say it cannot be critiqued, etc.

    That happens a lot here. Someone makes a statement, another person extends or exaggerates the argument or tone of the statement, and criticizes the extension or exaggeration. Kind of the way that my suggestion to enjoy a movie for its own sake was extended by Nicole into “Shut up” (I’d never say that).

  36. Darren Garrison said: “My problem with analysis/deconstruction is that the people doing it tend to present it as the interpretation, not an interpretation. To the interpreter, it is exposing obvious truths. To a third-party observer it is very obvious that it is being viewed through a specific ideological lens. (When you have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.)”

    But you counter that with an opposing interpretation, not by saying that the work is meaningless and has no subtext at all to examine. I remember someone said this to me when I pointed out the political subtext of ‘300’, and I said to them, “What you said is far more insulting to Frank Miller and Zack Snyder than any charge I leveled at them. I said I disagreed with the points they made, whereas you said they weren’t capable of making a point at all.”

Comments are closed.