Black Gate

The cross-genrefication of all genres has produced some interesting work. It’s true that if someone describes a book as “steampunk slash horror slash fantasy slash splatterpunk slash slash with a pinch of oregano” I’m likely to quietly sidle away, assuming that the project is too high-concept to include conveniences like characterization, plot and verbs other than slash. But the conventions of certain genres seem to me to have a hey-you-got-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate kismet about them. I’m thinking specifically of the Western and horror. Zombies in the old West? Transdimensional gunslingers? Billy the Kid vs. Dracula? Why not? The images mingle pleasantly and unexpectedly. Maybe it’s because both sets of images have a certain stark moodiness to them, when done well.

Cherie Priest’s Dreadful Skin is a newish (2008) entry into this not-altogether-new cross-genre. In it, a renegade Irish nun pursues a serial-killing werewolf across America in the 1870s. The concept raised hopes higher than the book actually delivered to me, but it’s well-written, covers some interesting ground, and I wasn’t sorry I’d read it. Hackle-raising (or at least heckle-raising) details after the jump.

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Neil Gaiman recently dismissed fan entitlement regarding George R.R. Martin with a memorable line–as memorable now as when it was coined in the comment section of John Scalzi’s blog 2 or 3 months ago (see comment 258 by “Tully” , who may be Neil Gaiman incognito, for all I know). Pointing out that writers are not machines is maybe a less abusive way to respond to the same concern (see comment 136 on the Whatever thread linked above). NG’s conclusion is that “George R. R. Martin is not working for you.” This undoubted truth is not really on point, though.

By the way: I am not one of the people who are chewing their nails down to their elbows waiting for the next “Song of Ice and Fire” volume. I read the first book, liked it a lot (though certain plotlines moved with what seemed to me glacial slowness, I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a bad thing). But I resolved not to read any more until he was done with the thing, because I was sure it would take a significant chunk of a working lifetime to complete and I didn’t want to suffer through the agonizingly long wait between installments.

I do, however, buy each one as it comes out, for the benefit of a SoIaF addict I live with. I’m not suggesting that GRRM owes me anything, except the book I’m actually buying when I plonk coin down for one of his books. But neither do I or the other coin-plonkers have to go on plonking our coins.

Fan entitlement may indeed be pernicious, but it can only exist in the presence of a fan base which is a good thing. It doesn’t seem to me that directing abuse towards GRRM’s fan base does GRRM any long-term favor.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is zapped into obscurity by the twin phaser-blasts of Trekstalgia and JJAbramitude, I would like to point out that the movie doesn’t actually suck.

I don’t know why I care. Big-budget summer blockbusters don’t weep for me; why should I weep for them? What’s Hecuba to me, or me to Hecuba?

Still, there was a lot of Wolverine hate fogging up the internet in the last week. A fair sample is the AV Club review (and the AV Talk segment that followed). If it hadn’t been for some dissenters, like the wide-ranging, always shrewd Ryan Harvey, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to see the movie at all. But I think it is worth seeing, for anyone who liked X-Men and its sequel, anyway.

More maundering, speckled with caveats and spoilers, after the jump.

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Everyone who loves imaginative fiction should raise their voice, frequently, in praise of NESFA, the venerable fan group whose press has been doing great work, putting out archival collections of classic sf in hardcovers. I was reminded of this earlier this week when reading Frederik Pohl’s pleasant reminiscence of his onetime collaborator Cyril Kornbluth (the fierce and witty genius who, too young, died a horrible suburban death right out of a Mad Men episode). I instantly went into graying-fan mode, whining that my old hero wasn’t sufficiently appreciated by the rising generation. It was swiftly and civilly pointed out to me that there is, in fact, a fair amount of CMK’s slender output still in print, including his complete short sf in the aptly titled NESFA collection, His Share of Glory (ably edited by Timothy P. Szczesuil). That’s not enough for an enthusiast for me, of course: I want an omnibus of all the Pohl/Kornbluth novels, and a reprint Kornbluth’s best book, The Syndic, and I want and I want and I want. But it was uncivil of me to ignore the existence of a book I liked so much, so I thought I’d review it here. As a bonus I’ll toss in some comments about the NESFA collection From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (edited by Ben Yalow).

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The Easter Bunny is a savage and unforgiving beast. This I always knew. I watched in dismay last week as he refused my daughter’s reasonable request for somehing practical and useful: the unyielding edict of the Bunny is that he brings only what is useless and frivolous. And chocolate, sometimes.

I thought I got off easy this year, as the Bunny brought me something I’d often thought about getting myself: the complete Spider-Man (complete at least through 2005). I haven’t been reading a lot of comics lately, but the Sam Raimi movies reminded me of how much I liked Spider-Man as a kid, and I’d often thought about having another look at them to see if they stood up to rereading.

The answer, of course, is that they do and they don’t. Some of the early stories creak audibly, even in PDF form, and there are definitely pacing problems. Page after page of costumed characters going THWAK! Ver-PLOCKKXKK! GLRRRT! at each other doesn’t really constitute storytelling, and as I boredly tapped on the “forward” button I felt some déjà vu from my school-age self, thinking these same thoughts forty-some years ago.

On the other hand, I thought then and think now that it’s pretty amusing when Spider-Man psychoanalyzes his opponents in-between punches. (“Why is it that everyone I fight is overflowing with neurotic hostility?”) And I like it that he has to use his brains to get out of most serious problems–it’s not all thwackery amd bonkery. And it’s just part of the Spider-Man set-up that he has this screwed-up personal life full of problems that superpowers can’t solve.

So: good and bad. But the worst shock that awaited me had nothing to do with the suspenseful plotting of (“Smilin'”) Stan Lee or Johnny (“Ring-a-Ding”) Romita. The horrifying details (with a possible Blood of Ambrose spoiler) beyond the jump.

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Blood of Ambrose has been out for a while now and it’s starting to be reviewed, rather generously on the whole (a not-uncommon reception for first novels, so I’m trying not to be an egomaniac about it). The reviews somehow make the publication more real to Enge-the-reader (as opposed to Enge-the-writer; these guys aren’t usually on speaking terms). I was looking at the review in Romantic Times Book Review and found myself wondering whether I should trust the reviewer’s judgement and buy the book, when I realized that there were already a few copies of the thing scattered around the house. Presumably these surreal “oh, yeah, that’s me” events will taper off after a while.

I’ve been bracing myself for the inevitable Memo to Morlock: YOU SUCK!!!! sort of review. It’s axiomatic that snarling at critics just makes the writer look worse, so I’m trying to figure out in advance ways that I can cope. (We’ve all seen how these things go. The writer begins by politely justifying his use of colons on p. 58, and before long the whole business resembles an informal colonoscopy of a wholly different sort.) Coincidentally, I ran across a link to this essay on “How to Handle Criticism” (mentioned, with comments, by Jeremiah Tolbert here).

Both of these guys have good advice, but they don’t touch on a potential coping mechanism: pay close attention to how better writers have been slagged in the past; it lends a certain perspective. And, as it happens, I was recently reading an old issue of The New Yorker (1926 vintage) where I came across a dismissive review of a book that some people (including me) still sort of like and which, unlike many a book published in 1926 (or for that matter 2006) is still in print: Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow.

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First, something which might seem like a naked shameless plug, but which is in fact a plug modestly garbed in news that might be of interest to Black Gate readers. As part of the run-up to the release of Blood of Ambrose, Pyr has put the complete text of a couple of Morlock stories on their “Sample Chapters” blog: “A Book of Silences”, which originally appeared in Black Gate 10, and a new novelette-length sequel, “Fire and Sleet”. Read and enjoy; no salesman will call. Send before midnight.

Anyway.

After several weeks of reviewing Nebula nominees, I was somewhat at a loss in trying to figure out what I should write about this week. Mulling it over, I decided I should publicly commit heresy.

My heterodoxy (not as interesting as it sounds): I believe that adjectives and adverbs are good things. Not just good things, in fact, but essential.

More shocking confessions beyond the jump.

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Apologies to David Soyka and all for posting off my usual day, but I thought I should keep finish what I started (for once in my life). It’s been a busy week, but I did finally manage to acquire and read the remaining Nebula-nominated novels.

And I’m glad to say that my preliminary generalization in the first installment of this post holds up: these books are not all created equal, but they are, in their way, all worthwhile reads. And none of them is genre-lite. Space squids could get freaked out reading some of this stuff.

Below the jump you’ll find the usual what-passes-for-thoughts.

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I haven’t actually read all the novels on the Nebula list yet, so this can only be Part One of the Final Nebulation (which began forty two billion subjective years ago with a look at the Nebula nominees for short stories, continuing with the novelettes and the novellas). But I should be able to post on the rest of them in a couple of days (assuming John and Howard and you don’t mind me making an extra post this week).

Not having read them all, I probably shouldn’t make any global comments about the group. But it does seem to me that the novels are by far the most impressive set of nominees this year. Maybe this just means I like novels better than short fiction (though I don’t think that’s the case). Maybe it’s just a so-so year for shorter fiction, or maybe it’s all due to AIG.

Anyway, here are my thoughts (if that’s not too strong a word) about three of this year’s Nebula-nominated novels: Schwartz’s Superpowers, Doctorow’s Little Brother, and Le Guin’s Powers.

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This week I turned my eagle eye toward the Nebula-nominated novellas, and when that didn’t work I actually read them.

My thoughts (or whatever you want to call them) below the jump. First a general observation that, again, may not be terribly original: the novella ought to be the perfect length for an sf/f story. It’s long enough to admit of a fair amount of world-building, while also giving time to unfold a few characters and tell a story. I’m not sure most of the nominees exploited the form to its full advantage; several of these stories don’t really have enough content to justify their length and might have been more effective if they’d been told with more economy.

On the other hand, I’d say that only one of them suffers from the “genre-lite” syndrome I referred to in my last post, so maybe I was generalizing from too small a sample. In short, Hic Spatiales Calamarii Loquentes (“Here there be talking space squids”).

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