If I can have but one thing said about me after I am finally in the earth (preferably after a dramatic battle in which all authors unite to destroy me), I would like it to be this: “He was the founder of the International Bikini Jousting League.”
If I can have two, I would like the other one to be: “He was never a dick without intentionally wanting to be one.”
Today, I might compromise that latter part, since today I am going to call out someone.
Before I continue, I want to preface this post with a few points:
1. I am not trying to quash anyone’s theories, pleas or discussions. I absolutely welcome the idea put forth below, even if I disagree with it.
2. I take absolutely no issue with the poster. Only his post.
3. It’s worth noting that I’ve been accused of the same thing that is present in this post and, at least in part, I am venting some of my personal frustration with it.
4. It’s also worth noting that I have, on public account, been guilty of the same dismissive attitude before (steampunk fans probably have a good reason to be irritated at me). I don’t quite agree with myself back then, but I don’t blame anyone who still holds it against me.
If any of these reasons don’t sit well with you, or if you don’t believe me, then I must advise you that this post will not sit well with you. Aside from that, though…
On one of the latest editions of SF Signal: Mind Meld, a thriving discussion on underutilized cultures in fantasy (with some very excellent posts by noted authors that you should definitely check out) is born. It might be said that I’m being an anus and a troll by picking at the comments, but one of these, by B.C. Smith, stuck out to me:
What bothers me is that no one (Gaslight dogs, I’m looking right at you) can write a SFF novel set in another culture WITHOUT making a big political statement. So much so that it destroys whatever interest I had in the story or charactors. That and some just can’t simply write good stories (hint: just because a SFF novel is set in X culture other than europe and has a POC protagonist DOES NOT MEAN IT’S GOING TO BE A GREAT BOOK). Shall I point people to the awful short story ‘pimp my airship’ (damn, does it pain me to have to bring that up) and the urban fantasy series by maurice broaddus. Not exactly quality literature and not even good SFF period. That and the fact that some authors take the lousy route of just doing a LOTR\D&D clone set in an arabian fantasyland (hey! just like a certain saladin ahmed novel coming out). I personally can’t wait to see somebody do an asian fantasy that reads more like Joe abercrombie, scott lynch, GRRM, brent weeks, glen cook or steven erikson rather than said D&D clone masquerading as something creative or original. And I like my share of fantasy in other cultures (the desert of souls and the winds of khalakovo), but when somebody writes in those settings just to use their charactors just to carry out their political themes (resulting in me being bored to TEARS) or get praise for being different but who really CAN’T be orignal with anything else, that just reeks of sheer fail. Heh, I could get shot down for all that, but please consider it.
There’s a lot of this post we could comment on, some that probably should be commented on by people with more of a strength for it than me, but, at the risk of being a picker of nits, I wanted to address something in this post that I find alarmingly more commonplace online and in genre readerships.
We frequently bemoan the lack of originality in fantasy, dismissing things as D&D clones/LotR clones/GRRM-hacks, whatever. This is not always an unfair assessment, but when it’s followed by such a dismissive gesture without even having read the book in question, it can come off as extraordinarily thick. Beyond that, there is a certain brain-twisting ire that arises from a declaration that nothing is original followed by a laundry list of authors that other books are faulted for not being more similar to.
I definitely don’t want to seem like there’s something I’m not getting, and I most certainly don’t want to appear as though I’m picking on B.C. Smith here, but something about this just doesn’t add up to me.
You can’t mutter irately about a lack of originality and then complain that more people aren’t like Brent Weeks or Joe Abercrombie. It doesn’t work that way.
You certainly can not like a book. You can even look at a book without reading it and decide it has no interest for you and simply pass it by. I don’t and never will claim to be the supreme arbiter of taste. But to not read a book, not like it, then go on to claim not only what it is but what it should have been cheapens the book itself, cheapens the book it was being compared to and cheapens the readership as a whole, giving the impression and reinforcing the impression that we only like the same thing told over and over.
Again, I’m not implying that every book deserves your unending support simply by virtue of having been written. I’m not suggesting that you need to agree with every book, accept every book or even restrain yourself from criticizing a book. Criticism breeds discussion and the more discussion there is, the stronger the book is. I’m not even saying you need to read outside your comfort zone. If you enjoy Brent Weeks and only Brent Weeks, go right ahead. He’s an awesome author and his books are great.
But don’t read Brent Weeks, only Brent Weeks, then proclaim other books to be unoriginal D&D clones because they aren’t Brent Weeks.
That’s all I’m saying, directly.
What I’m suggesting goes a little further.
I’m suggesting that diversity does more to help readers and writers than is apparent. The more readers appreciate diversity and originality, even if it’s not always successful, the more encouragement publishers have to pick up the new and offbeat. The more writers write new and offbeat, the more diversity readers have to read. I am suggesting that you never have anything to lose by exploring beyond what you’re comfortable reading. I am suggesting that you won’t always like what you read, but you’ll have new perspective that enhances your other readings. I am suggesting that you owe it to yourself, not the author, to go out of your way to appreciate diversity, resist the urge to dismiss and to sometimes be surprised by what you’ve read.
You may like Brent Weeks. I like him, too. I like his books a lot. But I wouldn’t like a store in which every book is a copy of The Night Angel Trilogy.
The only time I want to see more than one Brent Weeks on the shelf is when he finally realizes his dream of opening the super-store franchise, Weeks’ World, your go-to shop-stop for all things Brent Weeks and Brent Weeks-related including home fitness DVDs, haircare products, action figures, effigies of Joe Abercrombie and officially-licensed BrentGrillz, the only portable, indoor, electric grill endorsed by Brent Weeks.
It will happen one day, my friends.
And it will be glorious.
Oh awesome, another “good story” apologist. CLEARLY no one (Nnedi Okorafor) has written (NK Jemisin) anything (de Bodard) good or interesting (Amal el-Mohtar) outside of the comforting shadow of Tolkien. That is the worst excuse, right up there with the “political statement” line. No thought as to (a) why it seems to be a big political statement; (b) what political statements might be contained in some of the fiction he(?) purports to love; and (c) a lack of political statement is a sort of political statement. Holy carp!
I think the whole “political statement” line is sort of a safety criticism, a way of saying you don’t like the fact that the story is dealing with Arab culture (Ahmed) or race issues (Jemisin) without actually copping to having a whole opinion.
I won’t try to speak for him, of course. But I note a lot of people want to say things without actually being held responsible for it.
BingBingBingBing! Give the man a prize.
If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard this kind of crap (not just in fiction, but in every aspect of life in which the quest for diversity is equated with the embrace of automatic inferiority, a.k.a. the myth of the Affirmative Action quota hire who’s inferior to the white men that should’ve gotten the spotlight, said white man being “a cousin” that everyone seems to have, a.k.a. Those People Are No Good, but I’m not a bigot!!)… I’d be able to quit my dayjob. And buy New York.
I wasn’t planning to respond to it because like I said, I’ve heard it too often, and I’m tired. But also, that person was so blatantly biased — holy crap, dismissing a novel that isn’t even out (Ahmed’s) because you just “know” it’s terrible? And, all subject matter that veers away from the familiar stuff s/he knows and loves is automatically crap? noooo, that’s not prejudiced at all — that it really wasn’t worth having a conversation. S/he’s not working with logic; you can’t reason with someone like that.
Another point I forgot to make (sorry, pre-coffee as yet):
There’s a phrase that’s common in feminism: “the personal is political”. This is why — because simply by being a PoC and writing fantasy, people like B. C. Smith have decided I’m trying to make a political statement. All PoC authors are. That’s frankly stupid; given the brutally competitive nature of publishing these days, how many newbie fantasy authors break in with a novel that’s a blatant polemic? But people who think this way don’t see me as a person. They see me as a representative of a nebulous force or lumbering beast — Diversityzilla, I guess, and it looks a bit like the Cloverfield monster but browner — that threatens them. Nothing I do or say will change this person’s mind. Only by ceasing to exist as a threat — by ceasing to be a PoC, which would only be possible if I concealed my identity (but some people who think this way actually think that’s a good idea), or by being grandly derided as The Worst Writer Evar and vanishing into obscurity — can I become non-political again. Because then I, and others like me, won’t matter.
I’m not quite sure I agree about publishing being competitive so much as it is difficult to get into, but I have the feeling that I might be interpreting your statement incorrectly, I think you bring up a good point in regards to feeling threatened by a book. I think there are a lot of people who might not admit to it, despite it being a fairly reasonable reaction so long as that threat doesn’t dictate reaction. Though, as we’ve seen, the threat does quite drive the dismissive attitude and thus it is an issue worth discussing.
If it weren’t 4:30 and if I weren’t ass-deep in editing, I would definitely discuss it more elegantly than just pointing to it and going “ook ook.”
Well, yes, by “competitive” I mean “difficult to get into”. 🙂 Many, many aspiring writers work their asses off to break in; very few manage to succeed.
Sam: Yep, it’s a howler of a criticism, ennit? Because, y’know, Orson Scott Card and John C. Wright never put political/ideological stuff in their work. . . .
Nora sums up it with bitter perfection in her comment.
I very much enjoyed this.
I think what people find hard to understand about “original” story writing is that it is somewhat poetical. Originality is about voice, authenticity, tone and consistency. It’s not about following a template or not following a template. If it were a matter of doing things or not doing things with certain frequency, then a robot could write amazing fiction.
I admit it’s frustrating when new works look a lot like older works, but the acid test should be: were these similarities arrived at honestly through an organic creative process or by rote connect-the-dots story-telling?
Of course, you’re totally right. The thing is that people somehow feel worse about saying “I don’t like this book” than saying “this book is bad” or “this book isn’t what I want.”
Preach it brother! Especially the part about Weeks’ World. I must admit that, to be perfectly cliche, I’ve been rather quick to judge a book by it’s cover in the past, but once I started actually paying attention to the way books are written, I realized how ridiculously idiotic I was being. And even still, LoTR and D&D are, in my opinion, some of the first forefront soldiers in the SFF war company, are absolutely worth emulating.
Anyways, I could keep going on but I just say once again: Kudos bro.
Sam, thanks for this. The tendency to excoriate books for what they aren’t is deeply frustrating. (And I usually see it on Amazon reviews.)
I’m not sure what “political statement” the stories I listed are making. Unless it’s only that other places and people are interesting and worth reading about, too. Anything else is what he’s bringing to the table himself.
Also, what John said.
Sam,
I agree with what you said in your post but sometimes I think when people say, “I wish there were more authors like Joe Abercrombie and Brent Weeks”, they aren’t saying that they wish there were clones of these authors. At least, I hope not. If I were to make that statement it would mean, “I wish there were more authors who could take the good ol’ fantasy I love and make it new and fresh again.” Also, there is, in my mind, an extremely high level quality associated with those authors. If I were to say a new author reminded me of those two authors, it would be near the highest praise that I could give to a fantasy author… Anyway, hope this makes sense.
My only gripe with that is that it can quickly turn into a cloneage issue. I mean, I’ve seen authors take fantasy and make it new and interesting and still get the “he’s no Abercrombie” treatment. The problem, as I see it, is that when fantasy is made fresh again, it can quickly turn into a point where people will say “yeah, it’s fresh, but it’s not fresh the way I like it.” Which is fine. It’s when it’s “it’s fresh, but not Weeks fresh” that we have problems.
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS ONCE SAID TO HAVE MADE THINGS FRESH?
This is a very specific point of disagreement with the commenter, but I think the Maurice Broaddus books are genuinely amazing. If he/she read them and only WANTED a translation of the Arthurian saga into contemporary Indianapolis, then I guess he/she would have been disappointed. The books are much, much more than that – Mr. Broaddus has a great voice and created an incredibly ambitious narrative structure. (In short, he doesn’t write like Brent Weeks.)
Shhh!
Listen closely. Hear that? The sound is not an avalanche of boulders coming to bury your sleepy Alpine village, but my molars grinding together like tumbling train cars after being derailed by some moron who’s parked his truck across the tracks. I’m sorry, but it’s an almost atavistic response to this sort of stupidity. Yes, not taste, not opinion, but the rubbing together of a couple of underused grey cells with all the symptomatic resonance of a sickly cricket. It’s a stupid thing to say. Full stop.
But he’s not alone. This gem culled from farther down the comments stream keeps my teeth going as well:
“There are these books about a Chinese investigator of supernatural events that have great potential but the guy has no personality because he’s written by an English female. I would like to read the same novel as written by a Chinese male because that would allow me to learn how his thought process differs from mine (sic) a westerner.”
Now you can year a new sound join the mill-wheel of dentistry, the groans produced by another “only a male Chinese author, can accurately depict a male Chinese character” excuse. I’d like to print out the asinine comments produced against the Russ Pledge and slap him with it. Or her – but I’d lay good gold against base metal, that TheAlderian has never and will, menstruate.
Because this is one of the weakest excuses for either readers or authors to avoid expanding the all white, all European chorus line of their *fantasy* spectacular. But we see it all the time. Of course, no one seems to mind that most authors are also not authentically Elven/Dragon/Grs’mika/Lizardmen etc.. Nor that some of us, may well have lived in different parts of the Real World or even have, gasp, friends, loved ones, or children of colour. But we’re white dudes and white ladees, so of course we won’t get anything else – and we dare not try.
Lame excuse. Because there are plenty of boring European caucasian characters in print, so it’s hardly a risk to take the same chances with one that might, just might, have a different skin tone or cultural experience. And of course, it must be political because it couldn’t just be representative of our own 21st global experience. Fantasy often sits like a stagnant mid-14th century, ornamental fish pond in Geneva, ringed by insulating mountains and angry Swiss pikemen. Without Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta or Kublai Khan in it. Or any other adventurers who sought out, interacted with, and brought far ranging cultures and people into contact with Western Europe.
So we can certainly do better.
Take that risk. Take a punt and take it frequently and fiercely with reading/writing more diverse worlds, and you’ll not go wrong.
Alright. I’m off to destroy some breakfast now, with my furiously awoken teeth of righteous fury. But really, interwebs, stop being so stupid. I only have a thin layer of enamel left.
Corrects, Retractions, and Sage Wisdom:
“symphonic” and “will never” being what I *meant* to type. Any other mistakes can wait until I’ve had my coffee.
Never rant before breakfast.
“Of course, no one seems to mind that most authors are also not authentically Elven/Dragon/Grs’mika/Lizardmen etc.” Hear hear!
How would any story ever get written if we were all supposed to write specifically only about items we’d seen and experiences we’d personally had?
Should someone have told Tolkien, no you can’t write about heaven and the fall and rolling down a river in a barrel because you haven’t lived through that stuff; why don’t you write about the trenches in WWI?
And yea, it’s funny to call a book you don’t like a Tolkien clone and then wonder why more people can’t write like Abercrombie, all in the same breath.
Thanks for this post, man. “Don’t respond” is always the best course of action for an author but this one was tough to ignore, for several reasons:
A) Racist idiocy: The ONLY reason an Arab American might write a quasi-Middle East fantasy would be to make a hamfisted political point.
B) Just-plain-idiocy: This person knows what’s wrong with my novel seven months before it’s even been released!
C) Infuriating inaccuracy: The novel’s lineage has way more Scott Lynch than Tolkien!
D) Nerd pedantry: The discerning fantasy geek knows that it is impossible for a novel to be both a D&D clone and a Tolkien clone. Leaving aside the elves and dwarves, they’re two very different universes (Tolkien being the epitome of High Fantasy, D&D owing much more to Lieber, Howard, Vance, etc.).
And, fwiw, I also think Broaddus is a delightful writer. The idea that those books are poorly written is just plain insupportable. ‘Not my cup of tea,’ fine. But the prose-level craft there is undeniable, IMO, unless one is hung up on the idea that reading neo-Arthuriana by a Black guy is inherently onerous.
I find it interesting to compare this to gaming to be honest. Over recent years a lot of games have been criticized for being unoriginal or cookie cutter of other examples, that the entire gaming culture is being homogenized. It had been this way for quite a long period of time, and only further emphasized by large studios only bringing out sequels to proven franchises.
Only recently has this trend been debunked somewhat by the emergence of the Indie and Mobile gaming industries, smaller start-up companies able to produce content at a much cheaper cost and capable of launching them on platforms to a larger audience at bargain prices. With this capability at their hands people have been branching out in their ideas more and you get overnight success stories like Minecraft, Amnesia and Angry Birds, quite simple in concept but not something the larger companies wanted to risk a larger budget on.
Perhaps with the large adaption to E-Books that many are having through ipads/kindle/etc. the Literature world might consider branching out more with smaller Novella’s and the like. Shorter stories that authors can tell over a matter of months rather than years at a lower price point so it is more accessible to those who aren’t familiar with the author.
With taste in stories being so subjective people could get an idea if the type of story or writing style an author has would interest them without feeling like they’ve thrown money away if it isn’t for them. This way authors can also branch out and exercise their creative juices without having to plan out entire worlds and sub-plots to every action.
Literature is just at a decisive point right now I think, with gaming taking a lot of the interest it might have garnered previously and forever growing as an industry, literature needs to take advantage of new opportunities for authors to get exposure to their potential audience or risk fading out in this digital age.
Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that he isn’t just saying “these books should be more like X,” but that he’s saying “these books should be like *insert western authors here*”? That seems counter-intuitive to the whole purpose of the Mind Meld to me…
Okay……… pardon me for being dumb and just reading books, but can some point out an example of a D&D clone? Second is Brent Weeks really that popular?
I’m not sure, really. I’m beginning to think a D&D clone is a way of saying ‘I don’t like this book, but because it has an element I once saw in a D&D game, I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.’ And yeah, Brent is a pretty happening guy.