The Fredösphere

I've said it before, and I become more convinced of its correctness by the day:  some of the most entertaining literature of any genre is found among the Advice to the Young Writer.  Most choice among this type is the Fiction Magazine Submission Guidelines.  Such guidelines are de facto distillations of all the entertainment value (which is to say, unintended entertainment value) of the bottom 90% of the slush pile.  These editors do the miserable work of reading the drek; we reap the rewards.

Today, I direct your attention to Clarkesworld Magazine, an online outlet for the big three--fantasy, science fiction and horror.  These are among the types of stories the editors list as "hard-sells" (as they can't quite bring themselves to state unequivocally that they will never print one of these):

stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory

talking cats

 talking swords

stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a' comin', Communion wine turns to Christ's literal blood and it's HIV positive [yeeee-ikes! -ed.], Satan's gonna getcha, etc.)

stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).

stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago

stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it

your AD&D game

"funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns

sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates

stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one

The guidelines are not restricted to Thou Shalt Not invectives; here's what thou shalt include in the cover letter that accompanies your submission:

[I]f you send us a lusty pirate story and happen to BE a lusty pirate, mention that.

Dang, I could read this stuff all day.  Editors are geniuses!

Labels: Fiction

It's amazing how the existence of something like Lulu Titlescorer--its mere existence--can expand one's creative boundaries.  After playing with this thing for just five minutes, I suddenly knew (knew!) that a book with the title The Truth of Lies would be a hit.  Lulu agrees, giving it a 69.0% chance of becoming a bestseller. 

Lulu loves titles with abstract nouns and figurative meanings.  She also likes the "The __ of __" template.  I think she would have preferred my title have a proper noun in it too, but sorry Lulu, you are a harsh mistress and I cannot give you everything.  (But I notice The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has a mere 26.3% chance of being a bestseller.  Back to the drawing board, Robert A. Heinlein!)

Now, to the obvious question:  did I find The Truth of Lies first?  Not...exactly.

Labels: Fiction

I do hope you are catching the YouTube sneak peeks of the Harlan Ellison documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.  Start here (bad language alert), and also don't miss Mr. Ellison's unambiguous (and salty) opinion on the new all-content-is-free era we seem to be living in.  Don't overlook the irony, as you watch it, that you downloaded it for free.

Labels: Fiction, VideoClip

Eight months ago, the wifeösphere was convalescing after a pair of hammer blows in the form of a brain tumor and bacterial meningitis.  Reading was the only thing she could do without discomfort.  I was tasked with finding books she would like.  Naturally, I turned to Literature Map and entered a name, probably Madeline l'Engle.  Up popped Dorothy Sayers.  I went to the library and swept the shelves clean of her.

Later, wanting to join the Sayers club the quick and dirty way, I borrowed DVDs of BBC adaptations of Sayers' detective stories.  Sayers' answer to Sherlock Holmes is Lord Peter Wimsey.  He's the monocle-wearing son, but not heir, of a Duke; he's rich and sophisticated, and thus enjoys all the advantages and few of the obligations (beyond military service) of nobility.  He's also always the smartest (in every sense) person in the room, yet somehow not too arrogant.  He's Sherlock Holmes without the opium addiction or the misogyny; in short, he's perfect.

He's also perfectly portrayed by actor Ian Carmichael, who makes it impossible to imagine Lord Peter with any other face or voice.

I'll focus on The Nine Tailors, which the wifeösphere and I watched last week.  The title refers to the practice of ringing nine "tailor" or "teller" strokes of one church bell to announce the death of a parishioner.  Much of the mystery (involving some stolen and never recovered emeralds) revolves around the belfry of a certain country church, which boasts eight great bells. The rector fits the stereotype:  he's a scrawny dork infatuated by his ambition to ring an especially complicated change, all permutations of which require nine hours to complete.  Naturally the omnicompetent Lord Peter is an experienced ringer, so he participates in the ringing.

Ringing a change of any complexity requires certain manual skill:  one initiates the pull of the rope a second or two in advance of the moment the bell must ring, so the timing is tricky.  In addition, one must count carefully and keep track of the permutations, maintaining one's concentration over a long time.  This especially is what makes a change such an impressive feat, especially when one considers what an unappreciated feat it is.  (Surely only the ringers themselves ever keep count, or notice if a mistake is made.) 

Bell ringing is one of the purest examples of the matchstick cathedral mentality, especially when one considers the cost of the bells.  Like any geek pursuit, it intimidates with its arcane terminology:  "Kent Treble Bob Major," "cross and stretch," "calling up" and "calling down," etc.  Of course, in the age before electronic communication, church bells served an important function, as is shown in the final scene of The Nine Tailors where ringing of the bells warn townspeople to seek high ground before an impending flood.  They also play an important role in the denouement of the story; I wish I could give away the surprise, which is exquisitely calibrated by Sayers to illicit horror and amusement all at the same time.

This story reminds us that the hyper-mathematical impulse behind minimalism and its Eastern influences is not unknown in the West.  Perhaps we forget because we never quite thought of ringing the changes as music.  Silly of us, what.

Labels: Fiction

What do you read for pleasure?  There's a genre of non-fiction that's new to me, that few people know about, but is a source of endless delights:  Advice To Would-Be Fiction Writers.  Typically, an ATW-BFW author is an editor haunted by years of reading bad manuscripts.  There's a build-up of exasperation that comes out in the advice.  To our everlasting benefit.  And entertainment. 

Consider E. E. Knight's restrained complaint about extravagant emotions:

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia! - characters who always have their emotions dialed up to "11." They laugh "uproariously" at stuff that's worth a mild snigger, fight to keep from screaming when they're third in line at the ATM, agonize over whether to have the vinegarette or ranch. Can we save the "I'll never be hungry again!" fist-shaking for something more important that a checkout line, please?

The name "Fred" turns up sometimes.  It's more proof that "Fred" is the ultimate old-shoe name, rendered odd by the extremity of its familiarity:

For example, "Jane's dog" means the dog belongs to Jane. "Fred's house" means the house belongs to Fred (or at least that he lives in it). Apostrophe-S is used to indicate possession.

Another Fred, this one doing that ol' who-whom thang that Lenin talked about:

The nameless character would be a harmless trifle were it not for the fact that this conceit requires the writer to perform all sorts of elaborate literary gymnastics to avoid revealing the name. I once read what was otherwise a fine piece of work wherein the lead character's name (and gender!) were hidden through the first 57 pages, including a fairly graphic scene of the character having sex. Neat trick, no? Neat trick, no. See: Show-Off Experiments.) This bit of legerdemain was accomplished by arranging that every person in the book just happened to talk to and about this person without using a name, and by the writer referring to the protagonist as The Ranger, the Leader, the captain of the band, etc., etc., etc.

It did not take long for it to turn stilted and awkward. Nor did the eventual revelation of the character's name and gender have any particular effect on the story, or have any dramatic purpose. The sex scene was especially baffling, as the writer, of necessity, could not reveal the sex of the character's partner in bed. While the writer made it clear what was being done, the writer, trapped by her own cleverness, was unable to make it clear who was doing what to whom. Oy. If your character has no name, or if you keep his or her name hidden with a series of allegedly clever artifices, you will spend 23 pages stuck with damn fool locutions such as "the boy in the shirt." Knock it off. If his name is Fred, say so.

Another great (manufactured) example from the same link is the weird opener.  This is considered bad:

"Sarah walked down the aisle, still unclear why she had agreed to marry a giraffe. The groom, waiting patiently at the altar, resplendent in black tie, spats and spots, swung his long neck around to watch her approach, all the time placidly chewing his cud."

The spats are a nice, and nicely decadent, detail.  Frankly, I would be proud to be the author of such an opener.

C.J. Cherryh has her own pet annoyances:

Mirrors … avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. [...]  If you haven't read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

Limpid pools and farm ponds: I don't care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it's a mirror.

I recently listened to the classic Princess of Mars in an audio book from Libravox.  The faux-horses and faux-dogs made me roll my eyes, because I knew about the dreaded Smeerp:

[W]atch out for what Damon Knight calls “calling a rabbit a smeerp.” Just because you call a long-eared short-tailed lagomorphic mammal with long hind legs a “smeerp” doesn’t make it alien. We all write sf in standard English, unless we are Anthony Burgess (who did made-up dialect well), or some other people who do it not so well. There’s no particular reason to translate words for time, distance, and food into gibberish. (I don’t know why time, distance, and food are so susceptible to this in science fiction, but they are.) If your characters are drinking coffee, have them drink coffee, not “klaa” or “jav.” Coffee’s been around for more than a millennium. It’s probably going to last.

And, from the previous link, here's one of my faves, which reminds me of the time a white woman described her black adopted daughter as "literally an oreo."

"His Head Literally Exploded!"

"Figuratively" means that you are speaking metaphorically or symbolically. "Literally" means that you are speaking with precision and realism, that you are saying what exactly happened. "Literally" is not a generic intensifier. If you are talking about someone's headache, "figuratively exploded" is the phrase you're looking for -- at least in comparison to "literally exploded."

Ouch.

Labels: Fiction