Surreality Check

A Savage Writer's Journal

July 2003
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03 July 2003
No Hits, No Runs, No Eros

I hate baseball. It's a communist plot to destroy the fitness of American youth by encouraging them to stand around for the half of the game that they're not sitting down in the dugout. And that nonsense about "the hardest skill in sport is to hit that round ball with the round bat" was written by someone who had never attempted a bicycle kick, or probably even tried to head a soccer ball. Golf is worse, but that's for another time.

Between baseball and golf, the summer sport calendar is pretty discouraging. So, in theory, I should be writing more, right? Well, I am, but it's not fiction, and it's really not even very good. I find it difficult to have any passion for some of the stuff I have to write in daily life. That makes it not just drudgery to do, but pedestrian to read. I'm actually having more fun/success programming and laying out a mundane blawg—and that I'm having fun chasing down trailing quotation marks should tell you all you need to know.

Whine, whine, whine. ("Wine, wine, wine" would probably be more fun, but not necessarily with the selection available in this area—most of which comes either in a cardboard box or with a screw top.)

06 July 2003
The Name Game

Not so very long ago, SFWA was officially known as The Science Fiction Writers of America, Inc. (a Massachusetts nonprofit). The name was then revised to be The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., but the logo and acronym remained the same. This was a serious mistake. Not renaming, but the particular name chosen. There was a much better, much more inclusive alternative that would not have required any change in the acronym or logo and might have begun to head off some of the marketing nonsense being put forth across the pond that advocates separating fantasy from science fiction (presuming, of course, that one can tell the difference; how much of the material in Ellison's The Deathbird Stories is science fiction, how much is fantasy, and how much is both?).

Instead, the name should have been changed to be The Speculative Fiction Writers of America, Inc. Not only would that have included our erstwhile fellow writers who form the Horror Writers' Association, since many (or indeed most) of them use a fantasy-like "supernatural" base, and would have given writers of utopian fiction the hint that there is a lot of other utopian fiction out there that just isn't under that label, but it would have cut the legs out from under such idiocy as Margaret Atwood's recent statement that Oryx and Crake is not science fiction—thereby demonstrating her complete misunderstanding of both what "science fiction" has come to mean and her own work.

Atwood's attempt to distance herself from that rocket-ship stuff reflects much of the same ignorance as David Morse's disappointing The Iron Bridge. Morse and Atwood (and most of the "serious" fiction community) share the belief that what Hollywood puts forth as "science fiction" is in fact representative not just of the field, but of the best of the field. The counterdemonstration is left as an exercise for the student; be sure that your answer discusses Starship Troopers, Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Script, Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, and the 1985 version of 1984 (starring John Hurt and Richard Burton).

When an identifying term becomes pejorative, those so labelled must make the effort to force the change. It can be a long process; it took 30 years for the most-common term for those of African American descent to change from "Negro" to "black," as measured by use in government and legal documents. Vestiges of those terms may well remain in organization names, but those organizations as a rule become increasingly marginalized (e.g., the United Negro College Fund). However, labels imposed from the outside—usually under the misguided "authority" of those with political axes to grind, such as the extremists on both ends of the "political correctness" idiocy—almost never take hold without themselves developing a negative connotation. Such a connotation is not usually direct, but indirect. For example, consider the many attempts to change the term "handicapped." First we had "disabled," and now normally speak of "disability." This change was largely imposed by the "handicapped" community. Some of the more-radical outsiders, however, want to speak of "challenged"—which lends itself to such interesting results as "intellectually challenged" and "ethically challenged"—and the even less satisfactory "differently abled." The latter is a description of the difference between any individual and any group, because to at least some extent everyone has different abilities. The advocates of this latter change didn't think through the consequences.

So I believe that SFWA needs to think about itself with attention to the Rule of Names. Names are powerful magic that work even in highly technological societies; just look at the efforts Atwood put into incorrectly distancing herself from "science fiction." If she didn't believe that the name has power, she wouldn't make the effort.

11 July 2003
Fear of Dragons

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. As a general rule, writers have a piss-poor grasp of history, and most ironically of the history of literature. A.S. Byatt—best known for her novel Possession, later made into yet another overproduced Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle—has decided to take up the same cudgels as did Edmund Wilson. As an aside, it's not Byatt's fault that her best-known work is far from her best (Babel Tower); however, the fact that her reputation is built upon a book whose structure depends upon strangling the nature of its narrative may reveal more about literary fashion than the fashionable might wish.

In any event, Byatt has decided that Joanne Rowling is trash, rather like Edmund Wilson decided that Tolkein is trash. Wilson famously claimed that "[The Lord of the Rings] is essentially a children's book—a children's book which has somehow got out of hand" (The Nation, 14 April 1956). This is not to say that Byatt's particular observations are completely invalid. Rowling's prose can, at times, get disturbingly clunky, and some of the more allegorical aspects are far from subtle. I think, though, that John Leonard successfully ripostes with the following observation:

But least persuasive of all are the nitpickers who disdain children's literature to begin with, which just means that they are tin-eared, tone deaf and born dumb. (Where do they think we begin to care about stories?) Or the furballs who would prefer that we read instead Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Richard Adams, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl or Philip Pullman. (As if we were choosing up for a secret society; as if we couldn't enjoy Hermione in the library while at the same time taking a bloodthirsty interest in Hazel the Warrior Rabbit.) And finally the world-weary and wart-afflicted who complain about the mediocre movies, the media hype, the marketing blitz, the embargo and maybe even the notion of a single mom becoming richer than the queen.

John Leonard, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Nobody Expects the Inquisition,"
New York Times Book Review (13 July 2003).

If Byatt's failure to look at context, and at whether the parts somehow understate the value of the whole, is what it takes to be an adult, I'll pass. Frankly, though, having spent too much time in English departments myself, I suspect that perhaps—just perhaps—the average teenager in many respects has a less childlike worldview than do many tenured professors (let alone grad students).

16 July 2003
Just a Blog Before I Go…

No, this is not a blog. And it does not mean that Surreality Check is ending either; it is just some scattered thoughts (as if that's a surprise) before heading out of town for a few days. There is a dragon that needs slaying. I'm no knight in shining armor (the chromium plating is rusty, I'm still looking for a reason, and my sword is not .44-caliber). They'll just have to make do with a shark—that flies, as I'm sure as hell not driving there.

Gee, the way this entry has started maybe it should just limit itself to musical themes. Alex, I'll take "Songs First Recorded Before Most of the Readers Were Born" for 200, please. Well, perhaps not. Change is essential, and believe me, it's long overdue. Perhaps I'll just fly the astral planes, taking trips about the Bay, and come back the same day.

The war we are waging is already lost; the cause for the fighting has long been a ghost. Malice and habit have now won the day; the honors we fought for we lost in the fray.

I seriously doubt that any of my readers can pick up all eight references in this posting without using a reference book or website. (I didn't have to, so you don't get to.) Nobody else is really quite that sick… or stuck with an eidetic memory as well as being that sick. Ten bonus points for each (vinyl) album still in your possession with any of the pieces in question on it, and ten more for each live version you have actually heard in person.

19 July 2003
Fomenting Revolution

The "anti-copyright" crowd hates the RIAA and everything it stands for. It attacks foundations of copyright that extend far beyond recorded music, or even film, in a manner that thoroughly undermines the noneconomic values proclaimed in the Constitution as justification for copyright (promoting progress in the arts). In various guises, I have been fighting against this kind of nonsense for quite a few years. I want to offer an alternative to those people, because some recording companies do abuse copyright for their own economic benefit without regard to the purpose of copyright.

What I propose instead is that, if the current recorded-music system is so awful, people who want recorded music should patronize free and legal sources of that music, or at least of samples of that music. There is no excuse for a CD costing $18 list price; one can explain that price by pointing to greed, inefficient distribution, and faulty accounting, but that explanation is not an excuse. The typical awful quality of what is available from the recording companies makes Sturgeon seem an optimist ("90% of everything is shit").

In no particular order, I offer the following possible free/exceptionally cheap sources for your listening pleasure:

That's enough for now, by all means. Unfortunately, the only realistic alternatives for books and short fiction are the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Index (free), which does a good job of indexing public-domain materials, and Fictionwise (per-item cost), by far the leading online ebookstore. Some individual publishers have e-books available for download, sometimes even free (e.g., Baen Books, although ironically the "librarian's" most-recent e-book offering is available only from Fictionwise at this writing).

The less said about the horrors of film and digital distribution the better. Really.

23 July 2003
An Enemy of the People (?!)

No, I am not referring to Arthur Miller's polemical anti-McCarthy recasting, but to Ibsen's original play (which was first translated into English and published only a few years ago). In Miller's version, the roles are very black and white. The doctor wears the white hat; the politicians (all of them, in the generic sense), blinded by their "enlightened self-interest," wear the black. Ibsen's work (at least in this translation) still favors the doctor, but it's a contest of smoke-grey against charcoal.

Which brings us, in the usual roundabout way, to Generalissimo Ashcroft. Ashcroft and his minions (they're not good enough self-starters to be henchmen) would claim to be the doctor in Miller's version, although they are more often portrayed on the other side. The difference is one of intent. There is a popular saying in the writing community that "no villain ever believes himself a villain." Bullshit. Iosef Stalin and Pol Pot did not, it is true, consider themselves "villains" in the Western sense. However, each admitted to doing "terrible things," in the service of a "greater aim." That neither could tolerate accusations of evil intent based on those "terrible things" is a possible indication that at some level some small (very small) part of each of them recognized the wrong.

As much as I despise the man and his minions, I do not believe Ashcroft to have evil intent, except insofar as enforced orthodoxy is an evil intent (it is close to the line, but not quite there). I put them in the charcoal hats this time around, particularly in their treatment of Lynne Stewart and others who would provide counsel to various detainees. If there is one thing that Illinois's struggles with the death penalty should have demonstrated, it is that even supposedly airtight cases depend upon squelching certain outside examinations of the evidence. That is precisely what Ms. Stewart and other lawyers wish to do. Sometimes, even those outside examinations of the evidence will not poke a hole in that airtight case—because, after all, sometimes (and hopefully more than that) defendants are substantively guilty of the offenses with which they are charged.

The difficulty with Ashcroft and his approach is that support of orthodoxy has become, as a subtext, more important than doing justice in individual cases. That is a violation of the oath of office, which requires all federal officers to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Particularly for an attorney general, who needs to be concentrating on defense against the domestic enemies. Sometimes—too often for my comfort—that enemy can be the mob rule that Americans try to deny exists here. When an evangelical can demand prayers for the deaths of three Supreme Court justices for the explicit purpose of allowing the President to appoint new justices more amenable to his narrow and bigoted views, I become concerned. When nobody in the media points out that this is an exact corrollary to what that same evangelical said immediately after the atrocities of September 2001 and later tried to retract, I become angry. When the top law enforcement officer in this nation refuses to even comment on the issue, let alone condemn it as lawless, I get more than just angry. Yet that is exactly what has just happened, because Ashcroft and his minions cannot see that perhaps, in the bowels of Christ, they may be mistaken.

26 July 2003
The Con Man?

This year, I am afraid, I will be skipping WorldCon in Toronto. Somewhere among money, family issues, time, and some disturbing signs of disorganization, it just will not be possible. I will, however, attend WindyCon (Chicago, over Veterans' Day) for the first time in several years, and Norwescon (Seattle, over Easter). So those are my next con jobs. I am currently planning on either WorldCon in Boston or BayCon in San Jose after that, but too much depends upon the result and schedule in Ellison v. Robertson.

Wait a minute. Don't I usually sue the con men… instead of being one?

◊        ◊        ◊

Speaking of con men: I am afraid that, according to the information I have, everyone got conned concerning the Odyssey Novel-Writing Workshop/Gene Wolfe situation, as the no-doubt-continuing-to-lengthen list of letters over at Locus Online will demonstrate.

First: Knowing what I do of Gene Wolfe, I find it very difficult to believe that he would put inordinate criticism of a work into his comments. Mr. Wolfe is a model of civility, even under trying circumstances. His critical and writing-craft acumen are quite high. Frankly, if Mr. Wolfe did indeed savage a manuscript, it probably deserved it. Further, he probably pointed out many ways to improve it.

Second: Grow up! The whole purpose of a workshop is to get intelligent, informed reactions to one's work from people who do not have an emotional stake in maintaining relationships with the author, and to learn from those reactions. Based on what does manage to make it into print, Sturgeon was an optimist.

Third: Perhaps more than anything, this little episode demonstrates that a residential workshop format for novelists may not be the best way to learn. Unless the instructors are of the very highest caliber—like Mr. Wolfe—one often ends up with the blind leading the blind. Evaluative criticism simply is no longer taught at the undergraduate level in American universities, even in the elite literature programs. Instead, one learns only analytic criticism and sufficient literary and factual context to perhaps go to graduate school—where one might, if one is lucky, learn a little bit about rigorous evaluation.

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