Toronto Speculative Fiction

Went down to an event called Colloquium to hear local writers–and Mike Carey–talk about the state of the genre.

Oh That Whacky Print Medium

The afternoon was spent wandering around Queen’s Park, near the Royal Ontario Museum, checking out an annual festival here called “Word on the Street.” It’s essentially a place where big book/magazine publishers and small or indie book/magazine publishers gather to celebrate the wonder of print. Having spent the last ten or so years in Singapore where such an event, gathering up Singapore’s entire print industry, would have filled up maybe a quarter of a small, closet sized office, this was something of a boggle to my mind. The Wife was mostly there to hit up the various magazines (of which there are a lot) that might use illustrators for their work, and she came away with business cards and e-mail addresses. She also got a book she’d read as a child and lost, and now she is happy that her Nostalgia Factor can be reinvigorated once again. I myself simply enjoyed the ambiance, and really liked the fact that there were so many people and so many literary publications. I don’t know if I could ever do work with any of them, but it sure made me realize I’ve got a novel sitting around, unfinished and unsubmitted, so it’s probably time to do something about that once more.

And, in the meantime, here is a quick sample of the character creation system from Rock Band. I expect that something similar will be available for the PS2 version, just possibly with slightly rougher looking graphics.

No End In Sight

It was with a certain amount of relief that as I was listening to Ron Moore’s commentary on Battlestar Galactica season 2.5, he admitted that for the most part, it’s quite normal for him (and for many TV shows in fact) to NOT know how the season (let alone the series in its entirety) is going end until over halfway through the actual season. This was intensely reassuring to me, because not only did it remind me that creative types are human beings, it also reminded me that even as human beings, they are not the most far-sighted or plan-ahead types.

Of course not all writers are like this. When it comes to giving me a major inferiority complex, JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame has supposedly mapped out the entire arc of the Harry Potter series since the very beginning. But the one who really makes me bow my head in shame is Neil-O himself. The fact that The Sandman ended the way it did and that when you go back, you can see the various mechanisms that would propel Morpheus forward towards that conclusion is an astounding piece of writing. Ron Moore makes me feel slightly better about myself when he does stuff like admit that for the emotionally satisfying end of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled “All Good Things,” they didn’t actually have the conclusion to this 7 year old series until about a month before shooting of the series finale was due.

Personally, I like to think that I write in a way similar to Neil-O, though without his obvious experience and or natural instincts at play at the same level. What Neil-O does makes a lot of sense and seems a lot more fun to me; have some kind of conclusion in mind, but leave everything leading up to it up for grabs.

While I’m still not sure that he actually followed this with relation to the conclusion of The Sandman (unless he simply looked back on it afterwards and THEN started building up to his ending) it seems like a very spontaneous and interesting way to write. And it’s something that I’ve pretty much employed in my last three books. I always had a vague idea of how it was going to end (ie, this person dies, or that thing gets destroyed, or this crisis occurs) but I never knew what the events were that led up to this conclusion.

And for me, that’s where all the FUN is. If I have my point “A” and my point “Z”, I know which direction I’m going in, but all those letters in between are spontaneous adventures, and somehow knowing that I’m free to do what I want, provided that it leads to Destination Z gives my brain ample opportunity to play. Suddenly characters, situations, emotions and crises that might never have occurred to me if I were meticulously planning (or simply writing with no clear direction in mind) can spontaneously combust in my brain on any given day as I try to get to the end. Perhaps it’s not the most organized way to work, but it sure is fun for me.

So in the event that my books finally do get to see print and people ever ask me, “Did you know how it was going to end?” I can honestly answer “Yes, I did. I just didn’t know how I was going to get there.”

Real, Ultimate Literature!

Now this guy I have to admire.

It’s another one of those artifacts of the internet that online culture begins to accrete to, but I think most people know of Real Ultimate Power, quite possibly one of the funniest websites I have ever encountered, and a constant source of inspiration to me when it comes time to flip out and kill people. The site is essentially the fictional ravings of demented 10 year old Robert Hamburger and his opinions on Ninjas. Possibly even funnier than the actual website itself is the genuine hatemail that was sent by real people who were so angry that they actually threatened to kill what they believed to be an ignorant 10 year old child.

Well, imagine my surprise today then when I found this:

The part that really kills me about all this is the obvious care and knowledge of literature that the good people at Kinokuniya bookstore put into this. The Wife is working on a project that requires visual references of martial artists, so not only was this NOT found in the humor section, it was found in the sports section, specificually Martial Arts, specifically Karate/Ninjitsu.

Totally sweet.

Fan Fiction For Harry

I was doing a little bit of research.

I found a website with over 16,000 pieces of Harry Potter Harry Potter fanfiction stories. They run the usual fan-fic gamut from earnest sequels to alternate histories, to cross-overs with other characters to romance and, yes, slash (For those unfamiliar with the term, “Slash” is fan-fiction, usually written by women, about homosexual relationships between characters, the earliest fan-fiction usually cited as Kirk-Spock slash).

That’s a whole lotta’ Harry Potter mania.

The reason I was doing this was because I was toying with the idea of writing a counter-argument to what I was complaining about yesterday. It would involves an enormously talented Slytherin girl who is focused, good hearted, and absolutely obsessed with winning the House Cup because there is a reward involved in winning that just might save the life of her dying mother. Over the course of the story, this Slytherin girl would receive encouragement from Snape who would tell her things like, “As you long as you work hard, you’ll win. I don’t think even Dumbledore would play favorites” and she would begin to wake up the gentle side of Draco Malfoy with her earnest belief that if you do what the teachers tell you and trust that they sincerely want to see you succeed, you will.

The end of the story is, of course, that just as she’s on the verge of achieving victory and thinking that she has—legitimately and through endless sacrifice and hard work—managed to score a win for her house. More importantly though, this will save her mother’s life with the magical reward which she couldn’t afford otherwise. Dumbledore cruelly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by giving all those extra points to Harry and friends, thus condemning this girl’s mother to a slow, painful death. Snape is outraged, Draco swears vengeance, but the girl tries to keep a stiff upper lip about the whole thing. Even when she is brought to a private conversation with Dumbledore afterwards and it is explained to her that “Harry is the best of us. He must win. He must succeed. I’m sorry about your mother, but she’s just not as important as Harry.”

This, at least, would go some ways towards showing that not all the Slytherin kids could not possibly suck, and that perhaps the favoritism bestowed on Harry isn’t as cut and dried as it appeared in the movie. Especially if it led to someone’s—admittedly insignificant, compared to Harry—death.

Okay, So Maybe Harry Potter Teaches The Wrong Values

This is going to be an unpopular point of view, but oh well… For the record, let me just state that while I like Harry Potter, I am not a huge fan, and have only read the first three books, having gotten too lazy (or nauseated by hype) to read the remaining stories.

I am not going to rehash the old “Unsavoury celebration of pagan rituals” argument, because I think it’s silly. Actually what sparked this off was watching the first Harry Potter movie again last night. I doubt I’m spoiling anything for anyone by saying it was something that happened at the end.

Right at the end of the movie, as Dumbledore is tallying points for the various Hogwarts houses to see who wins the house cup that year, he pulls a last minute save. Slytherin is clear to win with over 400 points, while Gryffindor has only 312, putting it dead last. Dumbledore then goes on to award 170 extra points to Harry and friends, thus putting their house in the lead, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, thus beating out their hated rival.

It was the Fiance who was watching this that remaked, “It’s funny how this kind of thing seems really cool when you’re a kid, but when you grow up, you realize how unfair it is.”

Which is, of course, something I hadn’t really considered before.

Now before everyone breaks out the pitchforks and torches, this is not to say I don’t think Harry did a good thing. I think he did some amazing things in the first story, and emotionally, I was rooting for him just as much as anyone. It’s only once I took it out of the context of school and wondered about how I would react if this happened in, oh, say, an office that I started to see the undertones of Nepotism/Favoritism at work.

Basically, Dumbledore was playing favorites. All the teachers were.

On the surface, this can easily be excused by the fact that Harry is, in fact, a brave and good boy who is struggling to do the right thing, and manages just that in spectacular fashion. So it’s not that unreasonable to make a case for recognizing his amazing deeds. I now just wish that they’d done it outside of the established system they had for the House Cup competition. They could have given him an award, given him some special new privilege, given his entire House some gift, if they wanted. Instead, they ended up sending a clear message to all the other Houses; we like this kid, and the rest of you are expendable.

I admit, I am getting needlessly complex. This is, after all, a children’s story, and you need a simpler value system rather than overloading a child with the moral complexities and politicking that pervade the real world of social networks, so bear that in mind. It is easy to not want Slytherin House to win, because Rowling did a fine job of giving some very despicable faces to represent the House. Snapes comes off as a right bastard, and I personally would like to burn Draco Malfoy’s house down because he reminds me of so many arrogant, snooty kids I encountered in school.

But what about all those other Slytherin kids? What about the ones that were quick, intelligent, ambitous and focused, but NOT evil or selfish? Rowling went to great pains to point that none of these Houses were Good or Evil, merely personality traits. So over the course of school year, you had these other perfectly good kids, accomplishing their goals, acheiving their victories, and thinking they had earned a perfectly legitimate win by following the rules, only to have it taken away from them because someone else broke all the rules, giving them the clear messages that either A) What the teachers were teaching them was a huge lie, or B) The teachers taught them these things because they were already on the “loser track” of mediocrity and that the REAL lessons would be reserved for their betters, ie, Gryffindor House and it’s star members.

I guess this just kind of chafes at me somewhat because it reminds me a little of what bugs me about Ayn Rand, and her objectivist philosophy. When I first read it, I was amazed and filled with rage at the ignorant society that would attempt to snuff out the talents of the Chosen Few who were superior to all and didn’t have to play by the same rules. Then I wised up as I saw other people similarly affected by Rand’s writings, and watched them turn into enormous jerks that treated everyone like dirt because they had realized they were one of these Great Ubermenscheans Rand was waiting for, and everyone else was not. The end result being they acted like they were above it all, and treated others like they were not. Ayn Rand posited that there were a select, elite few that pushed the rest of ignorant humanity forward. Unfortunately, most people who read her books will come to the conclusion that she is secretly revealing to them that they are also one of these epic figures, and this gives them license to act like jerks.

In the same way, Dumbledore’s treatment of Harry and friends at the end of the first story is a similar declaration that “All you other children are merely fodder we are using to fuel this boy’s ascent.”

Let me say again, Harry’s character is impeccable. He deserves accolades, he is a brave and generous kid. I just wish he’d gotten his accolades in a way that didn’t make it abundantly clear to the entire student body that they were a secondary, expendable consideration. In the real world workplace, this kind of treatment would wreak havoc on office morale, and unless your star employee really IS one of these epic examples of humanity, he or she won’t be able to save your company when all the other embittered employees walk after getting fed up with being shown day in day out that they are dirt.

So Much For The First Book Being A Novel

They are offering money and the job is reasonable, so I’m gonna’ take it.

I just came back from a meeting where I was offered a writer’s gig to crank out a small, fact-based book/guide thingy for kids. The company’s always paid me, and were never especially cheap with freelancing gigs, so it seems like a sane decision to accept it.

Of course, the only dark cloud that hangs over this otherwise straightforward transaction is wounded writer’s pride of, “Damn, I was hoping that my first book on the shelves would be one of my novels.” As it is, the first book will now only be available on local shelves, and will have nothing to do with telling a fine yarn, so much as–like an extended magazine article–presenting the facts in a fun and harmless way.

Oh well…

I’m just going to try and rationalize it by telling myself I can just consider this a warm up for the real thing, so that at least I won’t be quite so nervous when the first novel finallys rolls onto shelves.

Yup, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…

Okay, So I’m A Lazy Writer

It only just occurred to me that while I read quite a lot, I haven’t actually read a novel (Unless you count me rereading Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game a little while ago) in years.

It’s probably incredibly philistine of me to admit it, but for the most part, the majority of things that have influenced my writing sensibilities lately have been movies, video games and yes, comic books. For example, when Neil-O’s 1602 finally came out as a compilation, I devoured that. I’m currently grokking Y: The Last Man On Earth by Brian K. Vaughan in a big way, and when I feel like I want to immerse myself in something inspirational, the only novel I immediately pick up and cruise through is Neuromancer by William Gibson. The other stories are, invariably, Moonshadow a graphic novel lushly illustrated by water color god Jon J Muth and written by J. M. DeMatteis, or else one of the Sandman compilations written by Neil-O, usually either The Doll’s House or The Kindly Ones.

In my defense, I am not a total product of pop culture decay. I have read actual novels and run the gamut of Kafka to Dickens to Miller to Nin to Vonnegut to Pynchon, and of course, Science Fiction wise, the old fathers, Clark, Asimov and Heinlein.

But lately I find myself really attracted to just the weirdness of what guys like Neil-O and what comics in general can do when they get really going, occupying that weird axis between film and literature, since they have words, but are also largely visual. There’s some amazing stuff floating around in there and comics have their own classics that have stayed with me (Like The Watchmen. Puuuuuure geniuuuuuuus…) and it seems like there’s so much cross over going on now it’s crazy. I never thought I’d see the day when the likes of J. M. Stracynzski or Joss Whedon would actually write for comics, let alone Kevin Smith.

But of course, would I even be mentioning I hadn’t read a novel in a while if it weren’t bugging me?

Okay, so maybe it’s time to get out there and actually read a book. Fine.

Any suggestions?

Downtime

Not much to report today in the aftermath of Suikoden III. I think I’m experiencing the game geek equivalent of post-partum depression in a mild state. I don’t actually feel upset or sad, so much as I feel like I stopped carrying something and I’m still wondering what to do now that I don’t have it to occupy my time.

In the meantime I’ve been doing small stuff. Wrote another article for Upload, a review of websites they gave me that forced me to join up with a free “Friendfinder” service for locals. Since I wasn’t particularly interested in making new friends, I just dropped the tagline, “Love Is Dead And I’m The Coroner” and proceeded to write a snarky, mean spirited intro that should repel all but the most psychotic of women. Nadya got back to me about changes she wants to make to her concept proposal again, and I did it and sent them off.

Oh, and I had to go down to my old, favorite post-production house, 4MC, now newly christened “Ascent Media” thanks to some merger out in the ‘States by their owners, and met up with an old coworker who promptly threw more work in my lap. This is a good thing, since it also meant I could bug her about the DVD and PS2 games that she owes me from the last time I did her a favor. Jen still needs to be written and finished, and I expect I’ll take another chunk out of it today.

However, I took a brief break to actually sit down and read something for once, something I haven’t actually done in months and felt pretty weird about. Since I can’t actually afford Pattern Recognition at the moment, I opted to go and reread the classic Ender’s Game.

Damn I wish I could write like that.

The thing that I like about Orson Scott Card (Or at least THIS book of his, I wasn’t too crazy about the sequels that followed) is that he is not the master–nor does he care to be–of style, eloquence or even memorable dialogue. What he TOTALLY kicks ass in is psychology. All the characters in Ender’s Game come off as very deep, unbelievably complex, and even if they’re not dropping pithy dialogue eveyr 5 seconds, everything they say or do oozes character and sympathy. Somehow, without relying on any kind of pyrotechnics, but just pure, blunt, human psychology, Card’s characters come off as more memorable and engaging than most of the extremely well-spoken characters that appear in the vast majority of literature today. Admittedly even when I compare my gods, Gibson and Gaiman up to this one book, their characters pale against it. How the hell did Card DO that?!?

It also pains me slightly to realize that this book I love so much was published by the publishers who are currently sitting on my book, and was in fact EDITED by the editor who has my books. I keep wondering what that guy could do for me to improve my writing if the likes of Orson Scott Card got his ass kicked by him. Argh… that eager part of me that wants to learn just sorta’ burns at how closely the opportunity is, and yet at the same is still inaccessible for the moment.

I continue to obsess about Xenosaga, now scouring the ‘net downloading every available audio and video file available to work up my already psychotic levels of anxiousness for this game to a whole new level of mania. I think it would really cool if someday I could actually work with Square or some other big RPG company and write the scenario for their game…

Sigh… a guy can dream, can’t he?

Oh well, off to pick up groceries. Whee!