Fiction Book Reviews

I’ve tried to explain, more than once, why I’m drawn to science fiction and fantasy. It’s a little easier when I’m talking about why I write it–I say things about how it means less research (this is not entirely true. Worldbuilding done well generally requires enormous amounts of research. But it does mean that I don’t have to drive myself completely bats trying to make sure I’m accurate to this historical detail or this aspect of such-and-such a real place–creating histories and settings of my own gives me an awful lot of freedom that way), how it allows me to explore ideas that might be rejected out of hand by readers in familiar, real-world situations but can be slipped in and actually considered if they’re dressed in new guises, and I have a virtually unlimited number of ways to look at those ideas. I love finding the universal and human among the unfamiliar and the alien. Besides, it’s just fun.

It comes down to all the same reasons, I suppose, if I’m asked why I prefer reading fantasy and sci-fi, but somehow that’s always harder to answer; usually I can’t come up with anything better than “…I don’t know, I just like it better, I guess…” It’s especially unfortunate that I often feel the need to defend my favorite genres, but I suppose most kinds of genre fiction will inspire similar reactions among people that aren’t into those genres.

Well. Not terribly long ago, I came across a link in Sherwood Smith’s blog to a review of George Eliot’s Middlemarch–and yeah, Middlemarch has nothing to do with speculative fiction, and yeah, I haven’t read it. But in explaining why Eliot would’ve made a wonderful science fiction writer, Jo Walton also manages to describe perfectly both the special freedoms and special dangers of fantasy and sci-fi:

In science fiction you can have any kind of story—a romance or a mystery or a reflection of human nature, or anything at all. But as well as that, you have infinite possibility. You can tell different stories about human nature when you can compare it to android nature, or alien nature. You can examine it in different ways when you can write about people living for two hundred years, or being relativistically separated, or under a curse. You have more colours for your palette, more lights to illuminate your scene.

Now the problem with genre fiction is often that writers take those extra lights and colours and splash them around as if the fact that the result is shiny is sufficient, which it unfortunately isn’t. So the most common failing of genre fiction is that you get shallow stories with feeble characters redeemed only by the machinations of evil wizards or the fascinating spaceship economy or whatever. What I want is stories as well written and characterised as Middlemarch, but with more options for what can happen. That’s what I always hope for, and that’s what I get from the best of SF.

If Eliot could have taken her SFnal sensibility and used it to write SF, she could have swung the whole course of literature into a different channel. She could have changed the world. All the great writers who followed her would have had all the options of SF, instead of the circumscribed limitations of the mimetic world.

Now go back and read it again, especially the first paragraph and the bolded bits. Because this…this is why I write SF. Because it’s bigger than the everyday world, deeper, wider, more fascinating. Because I dwell in possibility.

Also, I really want to read some good steampunk now, after reading about how much the advent of the railroad shows up in Middlemarch.

In case anyone’s wondering, no, I did not just now read this. In fact I read, and loved, The Hobbit and LotR before any of them were made into movies…and was then scornful and dismissive of said movies for the changes they’d made before I’d even watched FotR. So there. :p No, actually I just happened across FotR recently and ended up reading the whole first chapter, which reminded me why I’d fallen in love with Tolkien’s writing in the first place. Reading about Bilbo and Frodo and Gandalf was rather like visiting old, comfortable friends. I miss that fandom, especially since it was the first that really introduced me to fandom. Ought to make a point of delving back in over break.

But the real point is, I recently read Orson Scott Card’s  How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s quite good, for what it’s worth–highly readable with lots of useful information and instruction on craft. The only thing is, he was talking about prologues at one point, saying that beginning SF/F writers often feel a need to write a lengthy, boring prologue explaining the entire history of their world so that readers know what’s going on, and that said prologues are not only unnecessary but damaging because they turn readers off. And then he makes a point of saying this:

Notice that Tolkien does not begin with a prologue recounting all the history of Middle Earth up to the point where Gandalf tells Frodo what the ring is. He begins, instead, by establishing Frodo’s domestic situation and then thrusting world events on him, explaining no  more of the world situation than Frodo needs to know right at the beginning. We only learn the foregoing events bit by bit, as the information is revealed to Frodo.

Wait a minute, think I, doesn’t FotR have a prologue that’s something like 30 pages long? In fact, when I first read it, didn’t I spend about a week struggling through said prologue before getting to the story itself? Well, maybe…the edition Card read didn’t have the prologue? No, he’s writing this in 1990, so that can’t be it. Maybe the prologue isn’t called a prologue, then?

Nope. I looked. It’s 30 pages of prologue about Hobbits, the Shire, and pipe-weed. And in fact I remember having the exact problem Card warns against: the prologue bored me to tears. When I later re-read the books, I did find it interesting, because I’d already been introduced to the world at that point–but not on my first read.

So that was odd. And then, in my spontaneous re-read of FotR’s first chapter, which I did quite enjoy, I came across this line, talking about Gandalf’s fireworks: “They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion.”

Um. What? Middle-earth doesn’t have trains, express or otherwise. This sort of simile is…exactly another thing Card warned about, actually–breaking out of the text to put something in terms readers will understand but that characters will never use. Since it’s Tolkien, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that, well, the entire trilogy is technically a translation, I mean even Frodo’s name isn’t actually Frodo, and so on and so forth, so I suppose it’s like…the translator/editor used that phrase for the sake of modern readers.

But it was still weird–almost a little like the first time you realize your parents are human.

You might notice this is yet another old classic, kind of like Pamela (except not, in all the ways that matter, like tone and subject matter and worldview). That would be because I’m taking 18th-century literature this semester and have to read these books. And I can’t actually do a proper review of Tom Jones yet because I’m behind in my reading and am only about 50 pages in, but I just have to state for the record: so far, this book is hilarious. I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised by that.

Lest you think a book published in 1749 cannot possibly be funny to modern readers, let me give you the first example that made me laugh out loud:

Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress through this whole history as often as I see occasion; of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever. And here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction.

Really, anyone who’s going to start writing so tongue-in-cheek like that seems to have got quite a good sense of humor. I might actually enjoy this book despite myself.

Here, have a summary of Pamela that will save you hours of time and many headaches brought on by eye-rolling:

Pamela’s lady: *ded*
Pamela: Well crap, what happens to me now?
Pamela’s lady’s 20-something son, Mr. B.: You’re hot. You can work for me.
Pamela: Why do I think this isn’t going to go well? But still, how good of him to provide for such an unworthy creature as myself blah blah blah.
Mr. B: I can has sexy tiems nao?
Pamela: WHAT NO.
Mr. B: WHORE.
Pamela: Wait, what…?
Mr. B: How dare you when I’ve been so good to you! You’ve MADE ME LOOK BAD!
Pamela: Well, uh…if you want to insist you didn’t do anything improper even though you kissed me forcibly and propositioned your servant girl and stuff, why are you so mad?
Mr. B: LISTEN TO THE CHEEK OF THIS WRETCH. WICKED, SAUCY, NAUGHTY BLAH BLAH.
Pamela: But you didn’t answer my question so maybe I have a point–
Mr. B: SHUT UP OR I CUT YOU.
Pamela: I’m a poor and unworthy creature! Have pity on me!
Mr. B: For sex.
Pamela: …No.
Mr. B: You can say yes or I can rape you.
Pamela: I’ll die before I lose my innocence!
Mr. B: *kidnaps, imprisons, attempts rape anyway*
Pamela: *faints and nearly dies of…the shock?*
Mr. B: OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE.
Pamela: So…no more rape?
Mr. B: I still want sex.
Pamela: Answer’s still no.
Mr. B: Well, what if I am full of remorse and actually fall in love with you instead of just your hot, hot self, and we got married?
Pamela: What, for real? You do remember that I’m kind of way below you.
Mr. B: But I lurve you, and also you’re hot.
Pamela: Yeah, it turns out I’ve been in love with you for ages even though you were horrible to me, so okay.
Mr. B: *beams*
Pamela: *is SO HAPPY, ZOMG* My DH is so good to me! Even though I’m an utterly unworthy poor creature! Husband, give me things to obey!
Mr. B: Totally. I still like being really dictatorial, and I might stop loving you if you disobey me or interrupt me when I’m having a snitfit like a two-year-old.
Pamela: Sure, no probs.
Readers: …

Yes, I know it’s a classic and a foundational work of literature, but not only would it be vastly improved by cutting it roughly in half (you have no idea how much repetition there is–either we have to see over and over what a jerk Mr. B is and how many times he tries to get sex from her, or we have to be told over and over how awesome he is), it’s…just annoying, frankly. There are some good bits, about which I might say more except I’ll probably write a paper comparing this and Moll Flanders for the class I read both of them for, but I really don’t see the point in upholding these things as classic and assuming they must be good because they’re sacred or something, and not holding them to similar standards you would with any literature.

Especially since it can be summarized in an even shorter form:

Mr. B: *is a dick*
Pamela: *cries*
Mr. B: *is still a dick, but not as blatantly so*
Pamela: *RAPTUROUSLY HAPPY*
Readers: …