Short short stories

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Over at Boing-Boing they’ve just called wraps on their ‘Undying love in ?150 characters’ competition (the challenge was to write a love poem in no more than 150 characters: “this is a contest where speed and cleverness beat diligence … remember that spaces and punctuation count”). The results are definitely worth checking out, particularly with Valentine’s Day just around the corner.

Reading it put me in mind of conversations I have had with publishers and editors about the increasing plumpness of certain sort of contemporary Fantasy and SF. It is, I suppose, easy to get caught in a feedback loop whereby readers’ preferences for Fantasy novels in 1000 (or 3000) page chunks and the desire of publishers (and writers) to give readers what they want reinforce one another, and before long the shelves are stocked with books of baleinic proportions. Publishers I’ve spoken to take the view that a book should be as long as its story needs, and that most stories don’t actually need 1000 pages. Certainly, one of my favourite Pyr titles from last year, Theodore Judson’s Martian General’s Daughter, generates an epic heft without butting its head on the 300 page ceiling. Some great novels are very long, of course; but the danger is that great length becomes a kind of end in itself, or even a fetish.

Ernest Hemingway once claimed, famously, that the best story he wrote was only six words long: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” A few years ago The Guardian ran a feature in which a bunch of contemporary writers wrote their own six-words stories. In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, and with a view to bringing some original fiction to Pyr-o-mania, I post, below, six six-word SF-y stories of my own. I invite you to add your own six-word stories in comments. And if we get 10,000 of them, I promise to endeavour to persuade Lou to publish them all in a short-short-short fiction anthology.

Your eyes are lovely. With wasabi.

‘The sky’s falling!’ ‘Don’t be stu—’

One of these words is poisoned.

A headless man? How last-century!

The one law of robotics. Kill!

The French for six is cease.

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Stoning the Cast

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I was just reading the latest in the AV Club’s excellent reviews of Star Trek: The Series Without a Subtitle, and something occurred to me: old TV shows had a tremendous advantage over modern ones in casting aliens. One of the episodes under review is “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” in which the great Ted (“Lurch”) Cassidy plays, not just an alien, not just an android, not just an alien android, but a murderous alien android with an Oedipal complex. He gets lots of good moments in the episode (maybe the best being one in which he demolishes Asimov’s Three Laws in about three terrifying seconds). I don’t agree with Zack Handlen (the AV Club reviewer) about Cassidy’s costume in this episode: one wouldn’t expect an ancient android built by nonhumans to be running around in blue jeans or a tuxedo. Another culture’s clothes ought to look odd to us: if it were right, it’d be wrong.

But, really, the point I set out to make is: Cassidy makes this role work because he doesn’t look or sound like anyone else on the set. (He’s the tall guy in this old photo. Anyone who’s heard his deep resonant voice isn’t likely to forget it–see/hear a multitude of examples at YouTube.) His special effect was who he was.

Likewise, the original Andorian on Star Trek was played by Reggie Nalder. He’s quite plausible because, even without makeup, he exuded a certain inhuman malignant intelligence.

Character actors of this sort are a dying breed in modern Hollywood (if they aren’t utterly extinct), and there is an oppressive sameness to modern casts. Everyone is about the same height. Everyone is about the same age. Everyone sounds very similar.

The result isn’t necessarily bad casting, but it can easily become boring casting. If I ran the zoo were in charge of rebooting the Star Trek franchise, I’d be trying represent a wider cross-section of humanity… and I’d be trying to find some actors who can maybe project a little alienness even before they go into makeup (or the CGI equivalent).

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Roberts joins Pyr-o-mania

I was chuffed to receive an invitation from Lou to join the Pyr-o-mania blog, and agreed straight away. In fact both I and my 1970s-prog alter-ego The Adam Roberts Project have signed up. Our contributions will be on the “news, updates, random opinions” side of the brief, rather than the “general information about the Pyr line” side, which we’ll probably leave to Lou: but we’ll try and keep it interesting. Although, having said that, the most interesting thing I can offer right now is this photo of me with some municipal rubbish bins in the background.

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Sturges & Enge: Talk About Fantastic!

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Part One of an interview with Matt Sturges, author of the forthcoming fantasy Midwinter,is up on Newsarama. He talks about his comic book work – Jack of Fables, Shadowpact, Blue Beetle, House of Mystery, etc… – as well as his long association with Bill Willingham and Chris Roberson.

It wasn’t until I was in college, when my friend Chris Roberson, who is now a novelist and is also the guy who’s writing the new Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love mini-series this year, was the person who introduced me to comics. And the things he liked at the time were Legion of Super-Heroes and all the stuff that would become Vertigo. And because the Legion of Super-Heroes, at the time, made no sense to me, I sort of went for the Vertigo stuff.

Not that I didn’t learn to love superheroes, but for a beginner, the Vertigo type stories were more self-contained. This was the late ’80s, so this was when a lot of great stuff was happening in comics. One of the first things I read was Watchmen, followed by Sandman, then everything Grant Morrison was writing at the time. So those were the books that really formed my sensibilities about what comics could be and should be, and the potential of what you could do in a comic.

Meanwhile, James Enge, whose Blood of Ambrosewe publish in April, is on Rogue Blades talking about the character of Morlock Ambrosius, and the short story “The Red Worm’s Way,” which forms part of the backstory for the novel and appears in the anthology Flashing Swords Presents: The Return of the Sword.

I did a little fencing in high school, so I have some sense of how some parts of a sword fight might work. On a couple of occasions I’ve walked through part of a fight, just to have a sense of whether the footwork was possible. But I try not to over-identify with my viewpoint character: my job as the storyteller is very different from his.

Both are very interesting guys, set to make a spalsh in fantasy when their respective novels debut in just a few short weeks. Hmmm. Maybe they should read & interview each other?

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Seriously Cool

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Via SF Signal, Bear McCreary’s “All Along the Watchtower,” used in the last season finale of Battlestar Galactica, matched up here with some machinima battle sequences from EVE Online.

Seriously, cool, yes? And one more data point that makes me think the explosion of SF&F net-film is moments away…

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MIDWINTER: Starred Review in PW

Yeah! A Starred Review in Publishers Weekly for Matthew Sturges’ Midwinter!

Midwinter Matthew Sturges. Pyr, $15.98 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-59102-734-8

Comic book writer Sturges (Jack of Fables) makes an impressive debut with this superb low fantasy. During the titular cold season, the imprisoned soldier Mauritane is offered the opportunity to earn his freedom if he undertakes a risky mission for Seelie Queen Titania. Mauritane brings along a motley crew from the prison, including a gorgeous foreign warrior elf, a disgraced guard and a human scientist trapped in their world. Their Dirty Dozen–style exploits are interwoven with political intrigues at both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Sturges deftly works in superb character development, solid action sequences and engaging heroes and villains, as well as an original and fascinating mythological backbone for the Fae world. Although there is certainly room for the planned sequel, this tale stands nicely on its own. (Mar.)

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