Surreality Check A Savage Writer's Journal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
02 September 2001 I achieved my usual prediction success with the six major awards: the voting members were perspicacious enough to agree with me one third of the time. A couple of categories this year demonstrate that award finalists simply must include juried ballot entries. For example, the novel category included a work that was in the bottom quarter of the novels I read this year, and excluded three works superior to every one that did make the final ballot. I am not very pleased with this process; as I've explained previously, and no doubt at greater length than you care to hear, a Hugo (at least, if one reads the bloody WSFS constitution) is supposed to go to the best worknot the most popular/prominent/aged author, not to the author who most needs "career assistance" (but neither to the author who has won the most previous awards). In the order they appear on the ballot:
Not entirely surprising. Not entirely satisfactory, either, but then neither of the two criminally inept nominations won, so I shouldn't complain too loudly. As a point of explanation, I didn't list the ballot "top to bottom": only those that I thought "should" win from my ballot. I typically vote for two or three items per category, followed by that "No Award" guy who keeps getting on the ballot (talk about electioneering). With one exception: I virtually always end up with "No Award" at the top of the list for Dramatic Presentation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
05 September 2001 Fortunately, I didn't have to drive all the way to Philly by myself. We shared the driving. This meant, of course, seeing the sights (at o-dark-hundred) of western and central Pennsylvania from the Turnpike. Such as they were. This included a number of llama farms, more antique "outlets" than I can shaker a turned stick at, and lots and lots of high-cholesterol, salty, fat-drenched cooking at restaurants along the way. Cardiologists looking for study candidates should definitely consider this prime territory! Note to highway authorities: If you're going to have interstate highways this winding and hilly, please consider some decent centerline and roadside reflectors, ok? And some overhead lighting at particularly sharp or inclined curves wouldn't hurt, either. Just a few random notes on WorldCon. In no particular order…
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
09 September 2001 It's contagious, isn't it? Hang around enough people who are missing a few marbles and pretty soon you begin to think that way. This is not a good thing. Perhaps because sanity has never been one of my greater failings… and I don't intend to start now. I expect things to start calming down around here long enough to review a few more books in the next few weeks. There are several candidates for good reviews from Ursula Le Guin, Connie Willis, and a few others, with more on the horizon shortly. There are also, unfortunately, several candidates for dismissive (or worse) reviews. They're just candidates at this point, though. Anyway, back to the salt mines. Which doesn't really bother me, as I've been ordered by my physician to increase my sodium intake to compensate for low blood pressure. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
11 September 2001 I must find a way to distract myself from today's attacks, so I'm working on this journal. No doubt I'll have to recode it completely. My sincere condolences to all of those affected by the incidents todayincluding, unfortunately, opposing counsel in one matter, which had a New York office. I spent a number of years concerned with some of these issues, and that probably makes me more disquieted than most. The devastation caused by these attacks is frightening. I keep hoping that someone will announce that Orson Welles made a comeback and updated the famous The War of the Worlds, or that I'm really watching the Director's Cut of Wag the Dog. It's not that simple, or easy, or possible. My greatest fear is that the coming paranoia, however justified, will irreparably harm this countrywhich, no doubt, is the motivation behind these attacks. I wish I was imagining this risk, but I'm not. Take a look at Northern Ireland if you think "That couldn't happen in a Western country." I'm also wincing at the anticipated reactions of and to the Arab American community in the near future. We may be facing the post-Rodney King riots all over againin every city in which there is a significant Arab American population. Given the paranoia that today will evoke, I'm going to be surprised if there are fewer than a hundred or so attacks on Arab Americans in the next few days by angry assholes looking for a scapegoat. Arab Americans are no more responsible for Islamic-offshoot-inspired terrorism than German Americans are for the Holocaust. But they're going to be treated that way. Remember, though: If we treat them so, the terrorists win. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
13 September 2001 It has started already. New York is starting to resemble Northern Ireland, and what is most sickening is that the populace is demanding it. I'm not saying that no security precautions are necessary, but some of the proposals are just sickening. It's an awful lot harder to get civil liberties back after voluntarily relinquishing them than it is to create them in the first place. One prominent columnistI'm not going to give him the satisfaction of either a link or an indexable entryhas suggested that the major problem is with our immigration policies, implying that it's all them damned furriners' collective fault. (Said columnist's photograph betrays no Native American ancestry, so I think he's a bit off the mark.) But this is exactly what the terrorists believe about Americans: the stereotype of the Ugly American. The best answer, of course, is to change our behavior to become a bit more security-conscious (such as paying decent wages to airport security personnel and making them government employees, not employees of lowest-bidder security services) without changing our character. Just like a building, one doesn't make a society more disaster-survivable by making it more rigid. Instead, buildings must allow a certain amount of flexing to survive an earthquake, or even a Chicago winter wind (the Sears Tower, for example, can displace a startling amount in the windand is designed to do so). A rigid barrier against people who Don't Look Just Like Us, or a rigid system that allows the authorities to enshrine a national security exception to the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments instead of having to litigate it case by case, is going to crack when tested by the right (wrong?) stressors. Remember what happened when the Jim Crow laws were attacked from the flanks (the education system) by the civil rights movement? But remember how long it took, and the human cost? What is saddest is that we refuse to use the same "divide the enemy against itself" method that underpins all successful terrorist campaigns against the terrorists. Those who recall the early part of Monty Python's Life of Brian probably snicker at the arguments between the various terrorist organizations, particularly the animosity between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea. As usual with Python humor, there's more than a grain of truth in there. Compare the experiences of France and Yugoslavia in the 1950s with their respective partisan/resistance movements, and realize that instead of the three major factions of Yugoslavia there are at least half a dozen in the occupied Palestinian territories alone. In the Middle East, these are encouraged by the slightly less despicable fundamentalist factions in the Israeli government (who have at least partly reformed since the War of Independence by making their bullies wear uniforms). There's plenty of blame to go around there, folks. And here, too. 11 September is largely going to be viewed as an intelligence failure; it is, at least to some extent. The intelligence community, however, is partly itself to blame for its own capability shortfallsbecause it proved untrustworthy during the middle third of the century by acting like its Soviet counterparts and spying on dissidents, and because it has become so preoccupied with shiny new toys that the institutional memory of how to find, nurture, use, and protect human intelligence sources is fading rapidly. Of course, that was under leadership that is now largely dead, and doesn't have to live with the consequences. But that really is an internal matter. The system does need a kick in the pants. However, let's not forget that there have been several equally devastating plots defused over the last several years with little or minimal damage. Adjust things, but don't destroy careers because the analysts weren't infallible. In a waya very sick and twisted waythe American public is starting to learn a little bit what it's like to be a rape victim. Despite the general sympathy, the damage is done, and some people are whispering that we were dressed lewdly and flirted with the "guys" (most commonly by supporting some less-than-brilliant policies in Israel), so we had it coming. Like I said: very sick and twisted. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
15 September 2001 Vengeance is a luxury that only the powerless can afford. The powerful must content themselves with legal justice. Sometimes the remedy prescribed after legal proceedings looks a lot like vengeancebut it's that "after" that matters. Legal proceedings need not necessarily, in every instance, include a trial before an impartial court with right of appearance and right of appeal, except in the case of individuals who have not explicitly admitted conduct. Nation-states cannot be put in the dock, not least because there is no satisfactory punishment for a nation-state that does not itself create problems with atrocities and destruction of the innocent. That is not to say that extreme, but focused, force in removing a criminal regime from power is never appropriate. The legal process is necessary to ensure that the right regime is being toppled for the right reasons. In the current context, a punitive strike that resulted in the arrest of every member of the Taliban on grounds of a history of anti-US actions is not justified; there is not sufficient evidence of collusion with bin Laden or another agent of destruction in these atrocities. That we disagree, at a fundamental level, with the Taliban's treatment of both foreign nationals and its own citizens does not justify such action. Put the shoe on the other foot for a moment: Would we like the leftists and peasants of 1970s-1980s Nicaragua to make the same assertions against the Reagan administration? Whether one agrees with this or not, it's the same principle. This is not a principle that can suffer administration by degree, but only by kind. Sometimes, and particularly in this context, the best revenge is living well. Leave the strong actions to those who actually have the information and analytical capability to determine who really is responsible.
It was on a Sunday morning when the awful news came 'round
We gathered at the graveside on a cold and rainy day
There were roses, roses
Now fear it filled the countryside, there was fear in every home
"Isaac was my friend!" he cried, he begged them with his tears
There were roses, roses
Now I don't know where the moral is, or where this song should end © 1985 Tommy Sands/Elmgrove Music | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
18 September 2001 Out of a perhaps inordinate sense of fairness, I suppose I should provide at least some defense for the intelligence community over last week's atrocities. It could have been much, much worse. Before the fallout is settled, it almost certainly will bebut not through anyone's fault. The public should be able to infer that at least four major terrorism attempts within the US have been foiled in the last three years; even this asault didn't go off completely as planned. My imagination (and experience) tells me that last Tuesday's actions were badly misaimed; there were much, much juicier targets available, and the method (horrific as it is) is not nearly as subtle as the true madman would use. Counterterrorism is a very risky, imprecise business, for a very simple reason: It requires perfection or it's adjudged a failure. Although it took more than a single slipup, any single slipup can result in horrific consequences. Think of counterterrorism as emergency medicine, practiced while the patient is trying to get up from the table and the guy who stabbed him is in the OR waiting for another opportunity. Unfortunately, there are two simple things that the international legal community could do to help with the problem; neither is going to happen.
The modern concept of the nation-state is largely to blame for today's terrorism. Without the Balkanization of the world, there actually would be a "world's policeman"not just a part-time deputy armed with the legal equivalent of a pop gun. (Of course, the active feodality systems common prior to the rise of the nation-state were, in many ways, worse.) I realize this sounds a bit strange from someone of my background; so be it. I didn't get paid for thinking inside the box. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
22 September 2001 Napoleon believed that medals and ribbons, freely distributed to the troops, were one of the best means available to keep an undersupplied army motivated. It seems to have worked; motivation was never a problem. But does it work for science fiction writers? If so, should it? I suppose that I'm going to piss off some people here. It's not like I've never done that before, though. Gardner Dozois's annual Year's Best Science Fiction is the clear choice among the science fiction annual anthologies. No disrespect to Mr. Hartwell, but his emphasis on "core science fiction" is wrongheaded and harms the quality of his competing anthology. In turn, one of the more interesting features of Mr. Dozois's anthology is the extensive list of "honorable mentions" in the back. But just how meaningful is it? Adding the honorable mentions to the works actually included in the anthology gives some idea of what Mr. Dozois considers excellent work. Not surprisingly, the stories in Asimov's are the most common members of this list, however one slices the statistics. The remainder of the list, however, is quite interesting. The statistics for 1999 are not much different, so I don't think this is an aberration. Or, at least, not inconsistent with prior years.
It's really not fair to criticize Mr. Dozois for believing that such a high proportion of the stories he published as editor of Asimov's are excellent (one must feel some sympathy for the seven stories that were not so recognized). Even the assertion that 34% of the stories that should be recognized for their excellence in 2000 appeared in only these seven sources (the only sources with more than four nominations) isn't unreasonable, particularly as that seems to reflect (and perhaps underrepresent) the proportion if one looks at major awards and nominations therefor. Although I would probably be harder on my own magazine, or even exclude it entirely from consideration (if you want to read the contents of Asimov's for a year, buy the magazines instead of waiting for the following summer!), this is a difference in style, not one in substance. It's the remainder of the list that's interesting. In order, we have (gasp!) an electronic publication, statistically distinct from the remainder. Next, a defunct publication and a one-off anthology (together statistically distinct). The third group is an English magazine that is not, in the questionable judgment of either SFWA or WSFS, a "professional" publication, and a publication with a long history of excellence. Bringing up the rearso to speak, as that's really not a fair conclusionare the old-line Analog and the first in an apparent short series of themed anthologies. One can draw many interesting conclusions from this. The most important, though, is this: Electronic publishing must now be considered a viable first-run option; or, at least, one particular electronic publication must be. On the other hand, this list disturbs me in its overconcentration. Well over a third of the "excellent" works are multiple works by the same author. As far as I can tell, eight authors' entire (multiple) output of short fiction was included. Nobody always produces excellent short work for publication. While one can always count on Ted Chiang's, or Ursula Le Guin's, or Brian Stableford's, or Michael Swanwick's stories to be professional, one cannot always count on excellence. One must wonder whether the same result would be reached if the review was double-blind. (I don't wonder at all: several selections left me scratching my head wondering just how anyone found them readable, let alone excellent; a few were objectivelynot just in tastesubprofessional.) That is entirely the problem with the current method of submissions: the brand name on the manuscript has an inordinate influence. Maybe law reviews (or at least the better ones) do things better than fiction publications… a terrible prospect indeed, if one knows just how badly law reviews manage their submissions! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
24 September 2001 The last entry (scroll up) just led my fevered brain into more musings on awards. The biggest problem that I see with speculative fiction is that we don't have an award with street credibilityand none of the awards we have can get there. In no particular order:
See what I mean? My brain initially became fevered when I started reading the sour-grapish comments from some people critical of awarding the Best Novel Hugo to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is a valid complaint if, and only if, one considers that the Hugo should go only to the objectively verifiable very best work at a given length in a given year. Objectively verifiable? For a work of fiction? Give me a break. Bluntly, two of the best novels of the year weren't even on the ballot, and they are as close to verifiably outstanding as we can easily find. And two of the novels that were on the ballot are, in fact, objectively verifiableas at best thoroughly ordinary. When speculative fiction establishes an appropriate equivalent of the NBAs and NBCCs (if you don't know what these are, I've already lost you with this argument), and the field actually acts as if it cares, and starts to respect criticsespecially those of us who will bitch about the Emperor's nudity and varicose veinsmaybe the complainers will have a leg to stand on. Recall, though, that the vast majority of the persons who vote for any of the major awards have no substantial training in literature, or literary theory (which need not be as silly as it is often, nonetheless correctly, portrayed), and that many of the voters are individuals who have difficulty writing a coherent 750-word review. Until then, you'll have to put up with discord, and people like me pontificating that the reading public doesn't know what's good for it. It doesn'twitness, for example, the popularity of John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Janet Dailey, Danielle Steele, et aliabut that's not the point. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
28 September 2001 One of the major "writers' guide" magazinesthe slick ones found in every bookstorehad, up to now, been cleaning up its act. However, the just-on-the-stands issue indicates that some of the writers, and editors, just don't get it.
Before getting into the details of the article that has raised my ire, which will have to wait for next timeI'm too offended to give a reasoned and reasonable critiquewhat should writers be looking for from these magazines? And what, on the other hand, do they usually get? There are plenty of scams out there. A magazine that essentially supports the scams, often with scare tactics that drive writers into the wrong arms, is really no better than the scams themselves. Some wannabe writers have a very negative addiction; these magazines function as enablers. What disgusts me the most about the particular article in question (foreshadowing, anyone?) is that the magazine in question had given the appearance of trying to clean up its act, at least a little. Which is more than one can say for the magazines as a whole. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
<<<Last Month (August) Next Month (October)>>>
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Intellectual Property Rights: © 2001 John Savage. All rights reserved. You may contact me concerning permissions via email. This copyright notice overrides, negates, and renders void any alleged copyright or license claimed by any person or entity, specifically including but not limited to any claim of right or license by any web hosting service or software provider, except when I have transferred such rights with a signed writing that complies with the requirements for transferring the entire copyright as specified in Title 17 of the United States Code. This includes, but is not limited to, translation or other creation of derivative works, use in advertising or other publicity materials without prior authorization in writing, or any other non-private use that falls outside the fair use exception specified in Title 17 of the United States Code. If you have any question about whether commercial use, publicity or advertising use, or republication in any form satisfies this notice, it probably does not. Violations of intellectual property rights in these pages will be dealt with swiftly using appropriate process of law, probably including a note to your mother telling her that you're a thief. "The Savage Beast", "Savage Reviews", "Surreality Check", and the dragon-and-book banner are trade and service marks of the website owner. Other marks appearing on these pages belong to third parties, and appear either with permission or as exemplary references. |