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I would kill for more utopian/luxury space communism books. I think part of the lack is that it's gotta be tough to write. So much of the conflict you can use in other settings, money for example, don't really make sense, or have to be morphed a lot in that setting. Iain M. Banks managed it to an extent, but even there, a lot of the conflict comes from worlds that aren't utopian luxury communist.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:46
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Give me murder mysteries in utopian settings please, that would be interesting.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:47
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General Battuta posted:I don't think the way to that full range is to turn fangs on anything. I'm arguing against turning fangs on 'insufficiently hopeful fiction', not arguing for turning fangs on something else. No fangs. Many kinds of fiction for many needs. On that we agree completely. In fact I think we agree on a lot philosophically when it comes to the necessity of sober-toned, darker-hued fiction. But, and working back toward the speech and its called shot against comodified fiction, I kinda feel like we’ve turned cynicism and pessimism and mud/blood into a slice of the market, and that to me is a problem. If you blend that with the endless hunger for rancor and conflict and strife that rises out of a disunity that festers online, you end up with a constant howling need for identification from readers. It becomes ouroboros incarnate. When I was younger, I sought out art that laid bare the worst parts of humanity. When my friends oriented more optimistically would ask me why, I’d say because it tells a truth. I still believe that, but there are other truths to tell that don’t have to reveal flaws in the structure. We can choose to acknowledge those and we don’t have to sacrifice reality to do it. Reactionary fuzzy hug fiction is really no better to me than the relentlessly grim. It’s another kind of escapism. I think there’s some value in digging for an optimistic tone that still holds up a useful mirror to humanity at large. There’s room and value in both stripes, but I think the scales have been tipped for a while now. Great words. I love this thread. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 21:49
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General Battuta posted:Books aren't hash functions of an author's soul. They're intentional works. Authors assemble words in specific sequences to create effect. That's absolutely a problem. Books aren't things authors believe in. They're not a function of the author's soul. They're intentionally deceptive works. And authors fail to even recognise they're deceptive. It's not about writing a "belief" it's about writing what gets you published. It's a farce. Even authors that believe in their work will hide behind it when they get published. They'll have the weight of an industry, until it turns on them, to defend them. "Authors assemble words in specific sequences to create effect." What effect? And to what purpose? At best you could say to entertain a reader, if that isn't pitiable enough, especially if you believe in yourself as anything more than a trickster.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:04
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Got a happy newsletter from Lilith Saintcrow!quote:That's right--the portal fantasy I wrote (at white heat) last year while enduring the worst of lockdown has, thanks to my beta readers and agent, a release date now. quote:Drunk and disoriented after her best friend’s funeral, Ginevra Bennet stumbles through a door in an ivy-covered wall…and finds herself in a dry wasteland under a dying crimson sun, the only possible shelter a giant stone castle. https://lilithsaintcrow.gumroad.com/l/moonsknight https://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/the-books/moons-knight/
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Aug 16, 2021 22:09
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General Battuta posted:This all touches vaguely on a thriving tendency lately (or maybe forever) to read works as if the author must be experiencing the same emotions the reader is: they put the sex scene in because they were horny, they put the violence in because they were angry, they put the despair in because they believe there's no hope. It don't work that way. yeah this is a good post and all, but you're still not letting Baru out of this alive right nb have only read the first one so far
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Aug 16, 2021 22:15
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The more I've seen arguments from the Toxic Positivity kids who think all fiction should only be ~good vibes~ and, like General Battuta said, they think you're a monster if you depict anything negative, the more similar to fascist ideology their arguments start to get. (In the sense of being extremely stringent about what's 'acceptable' and what's 'degenerate' -- I have even seen some unironically use 'degenerate' to describe queer works they don't like  .) It's a little unsettling, especially with how much of it is coming from marginalized people policing marginalized people. (Some of them are kids who will grow out of it, or people who are hurt somehow and lashing out, but there are definitely some who do it just to get a rush of superiority and righteousness.)Aardvark! posted:I would kill for more utopian/luxury space communism books. I think part of the lack is that it's gotta be tough to write. So much of the conflict you can use in other settings, money for example, don't really make sense, or have to be morphed a lot in that setting. Iain M. Banks managed it to an extent, but even there, a lot of the conflict comes from worlds that aren't utopian luxury communist. Yeah, I think A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the most recent thing I've seen where the setting itself is pretty explicitly StrixNebulosa posted:Give me murder mysteries in utopian settings please, that would be interesting. Oh, yes, I would also love to read something like this! e: Oh yeah, the most recent Murderbot book kind of was? At least it's set on Preservation Station, which is its own little pocket of luxury space communism. DurianGray fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 22:19
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DurianGray posted:The more I've seen arguments from the Toxic Positivity kids who think all fiction should only be ~good vibes~ and, like General Battuta said, they think you're a monster if you depict anything negative, the more similar to fascist ideology their arguments start to get. (In the sense of being extremely stringent about what's 'acceptable' and what's 'degenerate' -- I have even seen some unironically use 'degenerate' to describe queer works they don't like Well that’s loving yikes. I get my dose of social media filtered through a number of small communities online, and choose not to participate myself. While I can believe that this exists, after all, intentional distortions can be comforting, this creeps me out hard. It makes a certain kind of twisted sense though, reactionary as it is. e: Bookchat. Working on The Blacktongue Thief and I find myself a little irritated with it. I think my view of Buehlman is a little damaged after I saw a much younger version of him doing the ren fair circuit as a character, Christoph The Insulter. His whole shtick was berating the audience for money, which is pretty funny in theory, but the content was so heavily centered around gender and promiscuity and stuff in a very mean spirited way that now it’s all I can see in Blacktongue and it’s kinda loving up my enjoyment of the book. Especially because it breathes so much life into tired and worn out tropes. It’s just familiar enough to feel comfortable, and just weird enough to feel adventurous. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 22:31
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I'm pretty sure half this thread thinks I'm a weird rear end in a top hat based on my recent posts so I don't know how this will be received but all those posts rule General Battuta. Absolutely agree with your assessment.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:35
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As a mostly former* fangirl: yes, I've seen a lot of puritanism in those spaces and it seemed to get worse in the last ten years. If you shipped the wrong ship or wrote anything dark there was a chance you'd get haters telling you that you were being immoral or worse. *I no longer really go to fandom spaces these days outside of ao3 because I feel like I've outgrown it...and because all of those spaces are now on discords. Tumblr is dead, livejournal is long dead, and twitter is so fragmented that it exists mostly to say "hey you like x? Go to this discord". Thanks, increasingly squeaky-clean corporate-run internet, for erasing all the places to hang and talk about which TV show characters should kiss.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:As a mostly former* fangirl: yes, I've seen a lot of puritanism in those spaces and it seemed to get worse in the last ten years. If you shipped the wrong ship or wrote anything dark there was a chance you'd get haters telling you that you were being immoral or worse. And now there's roaming squads of fans who will find ~problematic~ fanfic you wrote a decade ago and use it to harrass you off of twitter once your published works reach a certain threshold of success (a very low threshold if you are marginalised, a non-existent threshold if you are Disney).
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Aug 16, 2021 22:59
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Ornamented Death posted:Great series, but you're two years late on this announcement might be a localisation thing - i read the other two years ago and couldn't buy the third one (amazon.com but in australia) until this month. Thanks for the heads up!
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Aug 16, 2021 23:02
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Mrenda posted:That's absolutely a problem. Books aren't things authors believe in. They're not a function of the author's soul. They're intentionally deceptive works. And authors fail to even recognise they're deceptive. It's not about writing a "belief" it's about writing what gets you published. It's a farce. Wait what
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Aug 16, 2021 23:07
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Yeaaah, I don't participate in fandom at all, but I still see the edges of it sometimes and it is certainly A Mistake. Something cool and book related though! I've been trying to read more stuff being put out by smaller publishers and ended up subscribing to Neon Hemlock's 2021 novella series. So far I've received and read: The Necessity of Stars by Catherine Tobler. In the climate-change impacted future, Breone, an elderly UN diplomat in the early stages of dementia encounters an alien in her garden. I really liked this. It's not the sort of story or protagonist you'll see very often, and I thought it was executed nicely and with a lot of care for Breone. And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed In a dystopic future where the obscenely wealthy are legally untouchable, a high-end courtesan is murdered by a client. But she doesn't stay dead. The POV focuses on one of her coworkers as she tries to navigate her formerly-dead friend's quest for revenge without losing the safety of her job at the House. Short and lushly rendered, the focus here is on the internal conflict between survival in desperate circumstances and trying to do what's right. These were both really solid and interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else this series has to offer. I got these through Neon Hemlock's Kickstarter for the series, so I'm not sure what price-per-book I'll have ended up paying after stretch goal stories and all, but I know the listed $7.99 (ebook) price tag for each of these 80 page stories might feel a bit high.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Give me murder mysteries in utopian settings please, that would be interesting. Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman is exactly what you're describing, a murder mystery set in Heaven.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:11
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General Battuta posted:This all touches vaguely on a thriving tendency lately (or maybe forever) to read works as if the author must be experiencing the same emotions the reader is: they put the sex scene in because they were horny, they put the violence in because they were angry, they put the despair in because they believe there's no hope. It don't work that way. TBH i prefer to think as little as possible about the author as anything but a story delivery device for me. Its why i don't gel with a lot of the author identity issues that come up in the thread, i understand and respect that people can be good, bad, lovely and often all of the above but i don't want to know, especially in genre fiction*. If you are someone who wants to see yourself culturally or socially represented in your reading then more power to you. My non genre interests tend top be either history or food writing where i do care far more about experience and preconceptions. *unless they're nazis or something similar, happy to a hypocrite
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Aug 16, 2021 23:16
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That's a very privileged position.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:33
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I also think this is an argument custom designed to be the worst possible thing to argue about on social media, especially when you factor importance in
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Aug 16, 2021 23:34
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packetmantis posted:That's a very privileged position. I am aware of my privilege and i'm not looking to minimise other people's experience but I read because it brings me pleasure.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:45
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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman - $3.00 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054LJGWS/ The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - $2.50 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011UJM48/ Mort (Discworld #4) by Terry Pratchett - $2.50 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W967UQ/ The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection by CS Lewis - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LUYSAE/ A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) by Becky Chambers - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CNLOZ3G/ A Man of His Word: The Complete Series by David Duncan - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0732J6PN5/ Eon (The Way #1) by Greg Bear - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016CQUL4U/
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Aug 16, 2021 23:51
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packetmantis posted:That's a very privileged position. branedotorg posted:I am aware of my privilege and i'm not looking to minimise other people's experience but I read because it brings me pleasure. Yeah I find the idea that reading fiction needs to be some kind of exercise in morality to be very weird.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:13
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Mrenda posted:That's absolutely a problem. Books aren't things authors believe in. They're not a function of the author's soul. They're intentionally deceptive works. And authors fail to even recognise they're deceptive. It's not about writing a "belief" it's about writing what gets you published. It's a farce. This is the absolutely most broke-brained take i've ever seen.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:30
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I find the question of identity in fiction and authorship particularly interesting of late as I've begun the process of putting query letters together for agents, which is something I intend to fire off once my editor comes back with his thoughts on this manuscript. But the thing I've noted is the sheer number of agents who talk about wanting stories from LGBT or neurodiverse backgrounds. I'm lucky enough to fit both, but it leaves me thinking that I have to out myself in order to have the best possible chance of getting picked up. And then, like, does it become my brand? Do I become a representative for these particular things which, in the case of SzPD, is a kinda harrowing thought? Would it actually help a reader engage with my material, or is it just a cynical marketing point? It feels like "Hey, here's this story I've worked on for three years, and if you don't like it then here's my IdPol credentials to make you reconsider."
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Aug 17, 2021 01:40
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I find the question of identity in fiction and authorship particularly interesting of late as I've begun the process of putting query letters together for agents, which is something I intend to fire off once my editor comes back with his thoughts on this manuscript. But the thing I've noted is the sheer number of agents who talk about wanting stories from LGBT or neurodiverse backgrounds. I'm lucky enough to fit both, but it leaves me thinking that I have to out myself in order to have the best possible chance of getting picked up. And then, like, does it become my brand? Do I become a representative for these particular things which, in the case of SzPD, is a kinda harrowing thought? Would it actually help a reader engage with my material, or is it just a cynical marketing point? It feels like "Hey, here's this story I've worked on for three years, and if you don't like it then here's my IdPol credentials to make you reconsider." You've just articulated my worst fears as a would be author with a disability. At minimum, call it cynical if you'd like, at least in your position there's a demand for what you're selling. But it's frightening to think you could accidentally ruin your career prospects just for being yourself. I've spent a lot of time thinking about that and I think it's done real damage to my self image as an artist without me having sent a single query. Congratulations on the manuscript. You should be proud.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:52
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Please pull the hell up thread. Every time the topic of reader privilege/author intent comes up, it overwhelms all other discussion in this thread for multiple pages. Create a dedicated book barn discussion thread for this, it's the third or fourth time that this thread derail has happened this year, so it won't die off for lack of content or posters willing to talk. Fight club away somewhere else. Actual SFF thread content: I recently read Jack London's The Star Rover, and it is something powerful despite it's age. Didn't expect to find a strong "reform California prison systems/stop all methods of official and un-official prisoner torture" message in it, but that element is the most compelling bits of a book that is over one hundred years old.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:03
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quantumfoam posted:Please pull the hell up thread. Sorry, this discussion isn't any less worthy than your copy-pastes from decades ago.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:12
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Agree with everything General B said. Though one example of “darkness as laziness” that people I think are obliquely referring to is the work of a mega popular author like Abercrombie where nothing really improves for the characters and the world and we shrug and go “that’s life!” at the end. His work is very gripping but as an outlook it does not require the reader to work very hard to grapple with difficult ideas because in the end it will all be for naught. At least, it has been so far in his work, perhaps the last book in his latest trilogy will upend the status quo a bit. I’m reading Parker a lot recently who I think has more to say thematically in both Fencer and the Engineer trilogies about how the cruelty of the world shapes people and how they fight against it and what motivates moral or monstrous actions. Ccs fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 02:15
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Seeing as how fanfiction definitely written as a masturbatory exercise by the author keeps getting published with the serial numbers filed off this seems like a dumb, and self-aggrandizing argument.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:17
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packetmantis posted:Sorry, this discussion isn't any less worthy than your copy-pastes from decades ago. I disagree...my copy-pastes from decades ago are dead info clogging up the thread, so I've drastically cut back mentioning them over the past month or two. When that readthrough ends, eh whatever who cares. The discussion of reader privilege/author intent is valid but always seem to overwhelm all other discussion in this thread whenever it crops up.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:37
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Kestral posted:I completely support this statement, it just feels like we've lost / given up on the portion of that dynamic range that isn't dark, cynical, or depressing. We absolutely need fiction that takes the real world to task for its failings, and The Wire is a fantastic example of that, as are your own books for that matter. But we need something to dream about, and if we're going to take positive-outlook fiction to task for that, then this thread needs to immediately turn its fangs on, say, the entire romance genre, "cozy" fiction, and thread favorites like Discworld. idk how you can read any of the Watch books and not come away with the impression that Discworld has a lot of evil in it, and it needs good people putting themselves on the line to counter that. Just because Vimes doesn't always lose doesn't make Discworld a place with nothing but sunshine everywhere. The good people win sometimes in the real world, too. oh hey mort is on sale, that's good timing here i will solve the reader/author argument too: words in specific sequences assembled to create effect for some, slightly-polished sex fantasies/power trips/morality plays for others. the universe of words is large enough to contain it all
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Aug 17, 2021 04:10
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i think that everyone who wants to argue about whether authors really mean it when they put a sex scene in a book should be required to read (or re-read) mort, analyze it according to their thesis, and post their book report to the thread
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Aug 17, 2021 04:12
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i just had a thought. what if an author assembles words in a specific sequence to create effect, and the effect is the author getting a boner? i think this is the synthesis we've been looking for
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Aug 17, 2021 04:14
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i'd rather have a post or two per page of copy pastes from decades ago to scroll through than more "reading for amusement is white privilege" hot takes
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Aug 17, 2021 04:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:Give me murder mysteries in utopian settings please, that would be interesting. 
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Aug 17, 2021 08:36
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General Battuta posted:Wait what Basically saying that some authors (not all) put together work that they think will sell. They may not even be conscious of it. But there are definitely people out there who are constructing books not based on vision, or belief, or personal importance, but based on ticking the right marketing boxes. You just have to look at authors aiming to hit trends from readers to see this is the case. Film has the idea of an "auteur," directors whose personal vision and control is paramount. Yes, the word literally means, "author," but I feel like that's lacking in a lot of writing these days. Writers don't have a personal vision, they're just recycling what they thought was cool from other stuff. It's shallow.
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Aug 17, 2021 11:35
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quantumfoam posted:Create a dedicated book barn discussion thread for this, I mean, you could make that thread!
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Aug 17, 2021 12:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, you could make that thread! done. A new discussion thread has been created called "reader privilege and author intent discussion thread-all literary genres" https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3976774 The OP is minimal effort, PM me or quote me in that thread if you want anything added to that threads OP. Anything you want added to that thread's OP will be done so with zero commentary or editing other than <XYZ-Person requested this be added>. (I don't check PM's often so it's better and much faster just to quote me in that thread.) quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 13:10
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Mrenda posted:That's absolutely a problem. Books aren't things authors believe in. They're not a function of the author's soul. They're intentionally deceptive works. And authors fail to even recognise they're deceptive. It's not about writing a "belief" it's about writing what gets you published. It's a farce. This is off. StrixNebulosa posted:As a mostly former* fangirl: yes, I've seen a lot of puritanism in those spaces and it seemed to get worse in the last ten years. If you shipped the wrong ship or wrote anything dark there was a chance you'd get haters telling you that you were being immoral or worse. The fragmentation of the internet in general really bugs me, but maybe just because I grew up at a time when there were more unified spaces. It’s particularly acute here in China where the govt is getting close to achieving its goal of an entirely local internet with no cross pollination from overseas. How they think this will help maintain the tech lead that is also a government priority is unclear.
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Aug 17, 2021 15:58
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Nomnom Cookie posted:idk how you can read any of the Watch books and not come away with the impression that Discworld has a lot of evil in it, and it needs good people putting themselves on the line to counter that. Just because Vimes doesn't always lose doesn't make Discworld a place with nothing but sunshine everywhere. The good people win sometimes in the real world, too. I'm not advocating for fiction in which there is no evil or conflict, which would be deeply tedious, hence why I haven't enjoyed Becky Chambers and find Look to Windward plodding rather than transcendent. I'm advocating for more fiction which isn't actively a downer to read! The Watch stories are the most cynical things to come out of Discworld, but when you read them you can come away with a feeling like, "Yes, good things are possible, even if the struggle continues." This is... not as common a vibe or message as I'd like, personally. I'll read a downer book: hell, it's most of what I read, since it's what's out there that meets my standards of prose. Blindsight might be my favorite SF story of all time, and it's hard to think of a more existentially oppressive piece of fiction. But there is a place for hope, joy, wonder in SF/F. We can have our Earthsea,Prydain, Lud-in-the-Mist, and Queendom of Sol alongside our Three-Body Problem, Baru Cormorant, and Fifth Season.
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Aug 17, 2021 18:53
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So I picked up Catherine Asaro's first book (the newer edition from Baen), Primary Inversion and I'm settling in to read it and I looked up the author to see if any other goons had read it, and found this amazing post from 2016: https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...o#post466673715 WarLocke posted:So I just finished Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro and I do believe this was the first time I've read a sci-fi book where the central plot is about an exiled prince becoming a holo-rock star, power ballads and all. (Fair warning if you go to the original link and scroll up one post it's someone whining about KJ Parker being bad)
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Aug 17, 2021 20:20
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