Chapter 4:
Current music setting the mood for this analysis: Zero Wing’s BGM music for the first stage. “Open your eyes” by Uemura Tatsuya. Very fitting title for what we’re going to be doing.
Well, we’re back, and this time we’re opening in the War Room of Evil King’s palace. Unfortunately, this means that we’ll be getting two whole pages on the interior of Evil King’s war room, the interior decor, the tapestries ubiquitous to fantasy palaces and the scenes depicted on them, headhopping from omniscient third-person to Zanzeroth’s PoV to omniscient third-person once again, blah blah, lands beyond Evil King’s kingdom which Zanzeroth once traveled to, blah blah, how Evil King doesn’t acknowledge that any lands beyond his kingdom exists, blah blah, introduction in omniscient third-person to Kanst, general of the king’s armies, blah blah, description of Kanst, blah blah, jumping into Zanzeroth’s PoV again for him to contemplate his mortality, blah blah—by the time the action starts, we’ve managed to haul ourselves a good two pages of padding.
Unfortunately for us, Kanst’s description is rather stupid flat-out:
“He wore steel armor polished to a mirrored finish that was unblemished by any actual blow from a weapon. Albekizan liked Kanst, which again to Zanzeroth spoke ill of the king. Kanst was all bluster and polish. The king had a bad habit of surrounding himself with advisors who were more show than substance. Kanst and Vendevorex were the two best examples.” (Pg. 76)
Problem, problem, problem. First off, the description, once again, flat-out telling “loaded” statements and trying to strong-arm me into looking at a character from a particular angle, happily making me go the other way and hate the author more out of sheer revulsion. And Kanst’s armour? Well, supposedly we’re to infer that he’s never seen actual combat, but really, it’d have been highly improper to wear dented, battered plate to an official function. Even Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard wears his ducal regalia during official city functions.
Second problem, which ties back to the basic antagonist competency problem—if all the king’s advisors are so horribly incompetent, how the hell is he creating a reign of terror for the humans? Again, let’s look at a classic real-life example: Nazi Germany, in which I’m seeing parallels in here. People like Goering, Goebbels (Metron), Heinrich Himmler (Kanst), Dr. Mengele (Blasphet)—they certainly were competent at what they did, and the same goes for the rank and file. If you look at some old photos of the systematic rounding-up of the Jews onto the trains to the death camps, it’s horrifyingly organized, which is more than I can say for how the dragons handle things.
But here? If they’re all so ineffectual, why hasn’t Evil King’s dictatorship collapsed under its own weight already, especially since it’s highly centralised? Why hasn’t the treasury been emptied due to mismanagement? Why aren’t the peasants taking advantage of the situation to hide their assets, lynch tax collectors, plot revolution (without the need for Morningwood)? Up till now, I haven’t seen any suggestion of a cult of personality, which is all too common to your standard dictatorship, right up to literally worshipping the dictator as a god, neither have I seen any attempt by the government to control the spread of information, as evidenced by the fact the humans are allowed to freely gossip amongst themselves, so there’s no reason why this can’t be the case. Why aren’t the soldiers grumbling about why they aren’t paid? Why aren’t the roads running into ruin? Again, I’d like to ask the question: how is this government still standing if there isn’t anyone halfway competent around?
Third problem is the taking-candy-from-a-baby problem—if the antagonists are hardly effectual, then there’s not much challenge or tension in the protagonists fighting them. During the whole chase scene in chapter 2, there’s no tension at all, even if Zanzeroth’s CSI-style reporting hadn’t been around. Of course I know Bitterwood’s going to escape, but at least, I’d like to be fooled for a moment that there might be a chance he might actually, y’know, get captured. The complete incompetency and cartoon-like behaviour of Evil King and the palace guard completely wipes that out.
Anyways, Zanzeroth, Kanst and Metron are having a little chat about what’s going to be done next, and there’re some remarks on how old everyone’s getting. Zanzeroth casually mentions that he’s over a hundred and feeling it—which is what I call “breaking up and hiding”, or Jo Walton calls “incluing”. Either way, it’s telling of sorts, but a) unobtrusive, b) feels natural (by which I mean it belongs within the context its used), c) is appropriate for the information being conveyed and d) still gets the point across without too much ambiguity. This is how it should have been done most of the time, and when I look between this and Kanst’s description I do wonder whether this was an accident or otherwise.
Anyways, Evil King putters into the war room. There’s a bit of blathering about whether Bitterwood’s a myth or reality, and we get this immensely hilarious and stupid bit, which I’ve pointed out before:
“Still, I am not blind to the possibility that other humans assist Bitterwood,” Albekizan said. That’s why I’ve called you here. We are going to devise a way to remove the stench of humans from my kingdom forever. I’ve tolerated their kind far too long. They breed like rats. Their dung-encrusted villages spread disease. They create nuisance by leeching off dragons as beggars and thieves.” (Pg. 79-80)
Let’s cue the dramatic drum roll to Evil King’s Final Solution to the Jewish…oops, I mean, human problem.
Metron broke the silence by clearing his throat, then asked, “all humans, sire?”
“Every last one.”
“From what area?”
“From the world.” (Pg. 80)
(Sigh)
Really, Evil King now is pretty much the equivalent of Hitler; proposing genocide happily places him too far on the scale of morality (as it applies to antagonists) to even contemplate empathising with him. Mr. Maxey has stated in one of his replies that his intention was to make Evil King and Morningwood equal opposites on different sides of the conflict; I’ll shortly address why this isn’t the case when the relevant text quotation comes up.
Of course, everyone’s rather shocked at the prospect. Vendevorex makes his appearance and pleads the humans’ case, stating their usefulness in the economy, the relationships that many dragons and humans share, and that the humans will retaliate with considerable force if they know the game is up. Guess what Evil King does? He ignores Vendevorex and gives this particularly stupid quote to Metron while assigning him his duties:
“In your role as the protector of all knowledge, do you not teach that millions of years of evolution have produced the dragon as the highest form of life? We are by rights the masters of the earth. The human religions claim that they were created separate from other species. If they are not part of nature, why should we tolerate them?” (Pg. 81)
Oh, FFS. As if he wasn’t already cartoonish enough in his evil. This is like the antagonist going up to a helpless puppy and kicking it while laughing madly, just to show how obviously evil he is. Anyways, Metron gets to be the equivalent of Goebbels in the Third Reic—oops, I meant kingdom, and is charged to “Educate all dragons to this fact.” and “Persuade them to the logic of our cause.”
This is ridiculous. Which brings to mind a small point on the side—so much for the dragon rites of succession making each generation of rulers ever more capable and powerful, as they were supposed to do. Oh well. Anyways, Evil King wants Vendevorex to concoct a plague that will wipe out all of humanity. (Technically speaking, shouldn’t this be more into Metron’s territory? We’ll have to see their portfolios more in-depth, then.) Of course, having been given the protagonist ball to hold, Vendevorex refuses. Evil King fails to help his case by stating that he’s ordered all the humans in the palace slaughtered, and that he’s holding Jandra hostage, and finally by ordering Vendevorex clapped in irons and be sent down to the dungeons.
Dear god. Vendevorex’s response to this? To brutally slaughter the guards while making his apparently very magical escape.
The ruby in his silver skullcap glowed brightly. with a crackle Bander’s spear crumbled to ash. The black particles swirled from the shocked dragon’s talons, flying in a dark stream toward the wizard to encircle him in a shadowy vortex.
“Kill him!” shouted Albekizan.
The guards rushed forward. A weighted net was thrown over the black vortex, the wind of its passing causing the miniature tornado to collapse into an expanding cloud. One by one the earth-dragons lunged, tackling the cloud of ash. The sound of steel striking steel, then ripping muscle and cracking bone reverberated through the hall.” (Pg. 84)
#
By now, the ash lost its momentum and drifted to the stone floor. It was difficult to make out from the tangle of bloodied limbs and gore exactly what had happened. when the earth-dragons who could stand had finally risen, all that remained on the marble floor was the tattered remains of one of the guards, chopped beyond recognition. Of the wizard, not even a single scale could be found. (Pg. 85)
So much for someone who “has no patience for needless death” and is supposedly amazingly powerful, yet unable to concoct an escape without needlessly murdering a whole bunch of redshirt minions in the process. Thank you very much, now Vendevorex has managed to make himself appear an utter hypocrite. And this is the person Mr. Maxey says is the main protagonist. Again, it’s a clear disjoint between what Mr. Maxey claims Vendevorex is and how he acts, and I’m going to believe the latter rather than the former, thank you very much. He’s “a product of his culture”? Where does it matter? I’m not seeing it. He “has no patience for needless death”? But he just created a whole lot of it for its own sake! Claiming characters have traits, or even having them when they’re not put into practice and don’t affect the characters’ actions in any way—they might as well not be there.
This is highly personal, but once someone’s an utter hypocrite, it’s going to be a hell of a challenge to make them anywhere near likable—and when the protagonist is unlikable, there’s something seriously wrong with the way things are going.
Note here that it’s perfectly possible for protagonists to be morally grey or antiheroic while still remaining likable. Again, I’ll discuss this matter with the Bitterwood/Albekizan divide later on, but I’d just like to point out that if the reader is not induced to care about the characters in question, they’re not going to be reading on.
The insinuation here is clear: Vendevorex doesn’t hold the life of a dragon to be of equal worth of that of a human. Of course, whether this is good or otherwise depends on the circumstances, but unfortunately, the circumstances are against us today. First off, as I’ve pointed out, Vendevorex is supposedly for the sanctity of life, yet through his actions he clearly contradicts himself. Secondly, he’s supposed to be for the equality of dragons and humans, yet shoots himself in the proverbial foot by proving he doesn’t give very much for the lives of dragons—and just because prejudice is against a “dominant” or “bad” group doesn’t make it any more justified or right. Thirdly, as I’ve pointed out above, it makes him utterly unlikable, or at least to people who realise that just because people happen to be oafish minions doesn’t mean you have free license to murder them as you please.
Which brings us to the second point. Everyone knows the fate of your sad old guards, who all too often than not only made the mistake of choosing the wrong employer, and serve no purpose except to be slaughtered by the hero in your stereotypical “cool” scenes. So much for that. Humans count, dragons don’t. Because unlike humans, dragons aren’t sentient, they don’t have families, they don’t have emotions, they can’t feel pain, they weren’t intending to go off this shift and have a few drinks or the equivalent thereof with their friends…
I really, really hope the moral dissonance here is clear, in a book that supposedly deals with tacky issues such as racial relations.
Thirdly, while this conworld is supposed to be dracocentric and the humans the sad, oppressed people, it doesn’t help the case that this incident only serves to strengthen my convictions that morality in this conworld is utterly anthrocentric. Actions against humans are terribly evil and constantly decried, while actions against dragons are at best, given one or two lines from Shandrazel.
Of course, this whole incident could also be seen from another point of view—a good/evil dichotomy rather than a dragon/human one. That if you work next to Evil, sweep Evil’s floor, do Evil’s bills, unknowingly have a drink with Evil at a bar or are in any way remotely associated with Evil, the value of your life is absolutely nothing and the protagonist can torture and murder you without any hint of remorse. And this is a notion that I, thank you very much, find absolutely repulsive.
In any case, Vendevorex makes his dramatic and unecessarily gruesome exit. Zanzeroth makes a last bid and throws his hunting knife at the wizard, narrowly missing. What, you didn’t think he’d actually hit? Oh, and Vendevorex’s blood “smells of lightning”. I suppose there’ll be another superhero-ish explanation for this, like him really being the equivalent of one of the X-Men, or nanomachines, or something on those lines.
Anyways, Albekizan’s all angry now, and he calls for someone to be brought from the dungeons, horrifying even Zanzeroth. Supposedly, by the advisors’ reactions, this individual is supposed to be threatening in some manner.
Guess what his name is? Blasphet. Of course, the similarity of his name to “blasphemy” isn’t lost on me, and to make things even worse, he has the moniker “the murder god”.
As has been discussed before on the Antishurtugal LJ, a lot of SF/F antagonist names which try to sound threatening such as “The Dark Hand”, “Shai’tan” or “Adolfo” don’t really work because they sound absolutely cheesy. It suggests that the author isn’t confident enough to make the antagonist threatening through showing his or her actions during the course of the story, so he or she has to prop it up with these methods. The result is that even though the antagonist may be truly threatening, the reader has already made connotations with the cliched and cheesy, and these first impressions will colour the way the reader sees this character for the rest of the character’s appearances.
Think back to the truly creepy and dangerous antagonists you’ve seen in SF/F literature so far. How many of them have had names like that? “The Handicapper-General”. “Ministry of Love”. “Vorbis”. “The Auditors”. “The Jenonine”. Of course, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but the trend is worth studying, and I’ve provided a possible explanation above. Even superhero comics, which Mr. Maxey says he’s writing in the trend in, do use this to some effect. “Lex Luthor”. Any evil vibes if you didn’t know the character? “Magneto”. “The Joker”. Ordinarily, they’d be neutral names or monikers; it’s the way the characters act that defines them as threatening antagonists. (Then again, we do have some names like Dr. Doom…)
Anyways, the point is that the over-the-top name massively hurts Blasphet’s credibility as a threatening antagonist.
In any case, this ends the scene and we get a scene change to Jandra. Of course, that’s not before we get some description of Jandra’s quarters, which she shares with Vendevorex and is pretty much like a stereotypical alchemist’s workshop, with bottles and tomes, etc, etc, you know the drill. More exposition on how the humans will come to her every now and then for healing salves and love potions, yadda yadda.
Anyways, she’s reading on her silly little clam-snails when the guards (earth-dragons, of course) barge into her room and clap her in irons before dragging her out. Of course, that isn’t enough, so they have to be cheesily evil and slap her. There’s a bit here which is an itch that I have to scratch:
“The earth-dragon guards were no taller than her, but they possessed incredible strength. Earth-dragons were slow and a bit dim-witted, but still dangerous.” (Pg. 88)
This is a perfect example on the subjectivity of tropes (in this case, Dumb Muscle). In a game setting, this would make sense in order to “balance” the game and make for fair gameplay, which partially explains why “warrior”-type characters have low intelligence scores (or the equivalent thereof) and “wizard”-type characters have low physical attributes. However in a narrative setting, this would make less sense, and even less in a world that’s supposed to be a continuation of ours. The trope here is applied blindly and without justification, and now that we’ve had some insight as to our dear author’s direction with the human/dragon conflict, that the humans are kept dumb and uneducated by the dragons, it goes completely against the so-called egalitarian message by hardwiring a basis for racial discrimination into the dragons themselves.
Plus the fact that stupid, incompetent redshirt guards, or antagonists, for that matter, are never a good thing.
Anyways, it soon becomes clear where she’s being taken: to a chamber up in a tower with a good view of the courtyard below, where the guards are executing the humans one by one, Mary and Ruth included. Lovely. I’m not sure why the guards have unlocked her manacles, herded her into an exquisite room and aren’t watching her at all times when Albekizan’s given explicit orders that she’s to be killed. By all rights, she should be down there and first with her head on the chopping block, since she’s a priority target. Really, I don’t understand—oh wait, it’s so that she can escape. Silly me.
Oh, I also wondered why they’re killing them one by one when it’d be so much more efficient to do it in mass number ala the gas chambers.
This is an example of the problem I highlighted earlier on. Jandra only escapes because the antagonists, in this case, the redshirt guards, are stupid. It’s not through any particular stroke of intelligence on her part, not because of careful planning, but because the guards were stupid for no particular reason, especially after being given explicit orders to the contrary. It cheapens her so-called victory and makes it stupid and hollow.
Of course, Ruth and Mary get executed, which is a perfect excuse for Jandra to angst. Before it’s her turn to get her head on the chopping block, though, Vendevorex appears at the room’s barred window and calls out for Jandra (while invisible, of course). After a bit of nattering and ridiculously easy fooling of the incompetent guards, Vendevorex crumbles the mortar around the window, allowing Jandra to escape, but not before Jandra thrusts her hand in a nearby pitcher of water and magics—oh, wait, let me rephrase that—uses Amazingly Advanced Technology to turn the water inside to fog, obscuring their escape.
Let me now be pedantic. First off, common sense. How much water can there be in the average pitcher? One, two liters? Not enough to create the kind of thick fog required for vision impediment. That, in no way, is enough obscure my bedroom, let alone a large, exquisitely furnished room. Oh well. Stretching the suspension of disbelief once again.
Well, who didn’t see that coming? So Jandra gets rescued, hurrah hurrah, cue completely description of them plunging down, la la la, flying above the forest that surrounds the palace, cue aerial guard chasing them—oh, come ON. You think they’ll actually succeed? Vendevorex tells Jandra to make them invisible, and finally, we learn the exact mechanics of the invisibility powder:
Jandra clapsed her mentor’s neck more tightly with her left arm while her right arm reached into the pouch of silvery dust she kept on her belt. The wind snatched most of the dust from her grasp the second she pulled her hand free, carrying it beyond the range of her control. She knitted her brow in concentration, envisioning each individual particle of dust in her palm, feeling it come to life. She released it, and with effort kept enough of the dust close to her to make the light deflection possible. The tiara on her brow grew warm as she extended the control field, bending the flight of the dust to her will, swirling the motes into a sphere large enough to encompass Vendevorex’s wingspan. Suddently the sunlight summed as the particles began to follow the reflective pattern Vendevorex had taught her. (Pg. 92)
By this excerpt, the invisibility powder appears to work on reflective principles by creating a “mirror shield” of sorts, and the impression I’m getting here is of a giant disco ball. Unfortunately, reflection does not create invisiblity, and hence one can see disco balls. As I’ve mentioned before, invisibility occurs when the photons pass unimpeded through the object on the paths they would have taken had the object not been there. Reflection at best would create a visible reflective surface, and even assuming the few motes of dust were somehow, through amazingly advanced technology, able to collide with every single incoming photon and deflect them away from those two, the guards might not have been able to see Vendevorex himself, but they would have easily been able to see the visible reflection the powder creates, pretty much defeating the point.
Trust me on this. I’ve crammed enough optical properties of materials for my exams. True invisibility—not just merely transparency—is a tricky business. You’ve got to deal with reflection, you’ve got to deal with refraction, you’ve got to deal with stimulation from the invisible spectrum and re-emission into the visible spectrum, you’ve got to deal with suspiciously low patches of intensity (hypothetically), you’ve got to account for all of the above from all possible incident angles in three-dimensional space, and all the other needling little things like if you truly found a way to make yourself invisible, you’d either be blind or as good as blind, since either no photons would be getting to you, since they’d be all rerouted around you to avoid suspicious low intensity, or the fact that if you decolourised the pigments in your eyes you’d be blind.
Then even if you did manage to make yourself transparent without having the sci-fi equivalent of a petrify spell cast on you, there’re still flaws in your supposedly transparent crystal structure which will scatter light, leading to different levels of transparency, and of course, there’d be your edges, which would essentially be one enormous light-scattering grain boundary.
It’s not surprising that the few truly invisible materials as we know (when compared to air. If we’re looking from another medium, say, water, then water’s invisible, while air isn’t) are all gases, since they don’t have crystal structures and their molecules aren’t closely packed enough for their effective electromagnetic fields to have a great deviance from that of air (I.E. the permitivity isn’t too different). Still, refraction is still visible between pockets of cool/hot air as a distortion. I can’t think off the top of my head any solid/liquid material that is invisible. Pedantic, perhaps, but I really, REALLY need to scratch this itch and point it out.
And I’m going to explain it here once and for all, so watch my lips carefully, because I don’t want to have to explain it again:
The reason I’m being so anal about the science involved here is because in claiming this is post-apocalyptic Earth with a general technology level lower than that of what we have today, this novel locked itself into a “hard” science fiction paradigm, as opposed to a “soft” science fiction paradigm. The difference between “hard” and “soft” sci-fi is that in “soft” sci-fi, the more “magical” aspects of the genre tend to be handwaved. Star Trek doesn’t claim to be set on the same world (as we understand it) as we do, it’s set at level of technology far further than what we have today, with the possibility of importation from non-Earth cultures—the expectations created in the watchers of Star Trek are different from, say, people watching a Twenty Minutes Into the Future show like, say, Terminator. Sentient computers aren’t so much a stretch of old suspension of disbelief than replicators.
Long story made short—suspension of disbelief for “soft” sci-fi is much, much more flexible than for “hard” sci-fi. Of course, there’s a spectrum, but while people won’t argue about Scotty beaming up someone, I believe they’re very much justified in asking a few questions about the mechanics of things that’re going around here, especially if they’re wrong by current understanding. Maybe if there weren’t so many attempted explanations and “oh yeah, this magic-looking action is really science!” exclamations, I wouldn’t have been so anal. But since there are, and the novel seems like it’s trying really hard to be “hard” (hurr, hurr, I made a pun)
This is best exemplified by a novel series which suffered from its attempt to shift from the “soft” to “hard” paradigms—the Dragonriders of Pern series. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Somewhere in the middle of the series (around The Renegades of Pern and All the Weyrs of Pern), McCaffrey apparently decided to do away with as many of the “magical” aspects of the series as possible and replace them with “scientific” ones; I.E. a shift from “soft” to “hard” sci-fi. The exact method through which this was accomplished was an arguable ass pull (AIVAS), but with it the main characters suddenly went around piloting spaceships, putting on spacesuits, going from “idiot” to “PH.D” levels of “science” in the span of a few years. Most importantly to our discussion, psuedoscientific explanations got thrown out for everything that was vaguely magical, from the ridiculous triple-helixed firelizard DNA to Mentasynth to the famous telepathy.
I suppose you can guess the fan reaction. Readers less attracted to the turn the novels were taking quit the series entirely, but that’s not the focus of my argument. The focus is that suddenly, bits and bobs about the dragons that were once taken for granted or went unquestioned were suddenly pulled into question. How could this work? How could that work? Why was this happening? Something that was clearly unsuited to “hard” SF was being forcibly pummeled to fit the hole, and it showed. The level of suspension of disbelief that was required was torn down, and with it a good bit of the series’ quality and attractiveness.
In short: Bitterwood, whatever the author’s intentions, has made itself known to me as “hard” sf through the prose itself. The science must work, or at least, not be proven wrong. Got it? Good, let’s move on. On a side note, nanites are really just sci-fi’s way of saying “a wizard did it”, much like genetic engineering is the new radioactivity.
Anyways, they’re puttering along, and in a moment of plot convenience, Jandra’s concentration wavers, and with it their invisibility shield. Oh noes, the guards are onto them, and one of them, surprisingly, is competent enough to almost hit Vendevorex. Note here: almost is never good enough. But oh well, god forbid that the antagonists be allowed some sort of minor victory; in another bit of plot contrivance, Jandra’s grasp on Vendevorex slips. Unfortunately for us, she doesn’t fall to her death, but instead has a couple of trees and a river break her fall. She climbs out to face the guard, about to kill her—
—But he doesn’t, despite the fact that Jandra and Vendevorex are supposedly now on kill on sight status. I’d just like to quote Sam Vimes here, or at least, his thoughts:
“If you get captured, hope like hell it’s an evil man. An evil man will want to gloat. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.” If half the antagonists stopped puttering around and actually took opportunities when they had them, Jandra and perhaps Vendevorex would already be dead. Again, antagonist competency problem.
Which also brings up the basic way militaries are organised: you never go anywhere alone while in the field. You always at least have your buddy with you, and you let someone else besides him or her know where you are going. Or at least, that’s the way my two years in the armed forces were spent, both in boot camp and later posted out to the navy. It’s only common sense.
Anyways, Vendevorex emerges from the trees, cloaked in an illusion that makes him appear small and unthreatening. Again, I don’t understand why the guard didn’t finish off Jandra and turn on him if he looks so helpless. No, his reaction is to stare until Vendevorex drops his illusion and attack. Now we’re treated to a scene that reminds me of the scene in Eragon in which our favourite dragon-rider threatens a guard with a burning grain of sand:
Vendevorex allowed his circle of invisibility to break apart. He stood ten feet away with the body of the aerial guard at his feet. The guard clawed helplessly at his jaws, emitting small, muffled grunts through his flared nostrils. The skin around his mouth was melted togehter. Large talon-shaped holes had been burned into his wings; he would never fly again.
“When your brothers find you and cut your mouth open, I want you to give them a message from me,” Vendevorex growled. His eyes glowed as if lit by an internal sun. “My decision to run should not be interpreted as a sign that I am weak of defenseless. Anyone who attempts pursuit will face a fate much worse than yours. If I didn’t want you to tell your brothers this, I would have killed you already. You live only because you retain this slight usefulness to me.” (Pg. 96)
Mighty similar, aren’t we? Producing the same assaulted sensibilities and sensations of revulsion? And again, this is supposed to be the reluctant hero, the person who sees no point in needless death. The person who in the same chapter, said that killing off humans was an idea he found abhorrent. The guy, who by authorial word, is supposed to be the main protagonist. The guy we’re suppose to like and empathise with.
I don’t remember Prof. Xavier, whom Vendevorex is supposed to be the equivalent of, doing cruel and unusual punishment to redshirts. Care to remind me? Then again, who cares? They’re guards. Their sole reason for existing is to become cannon fodder for the protagonists and be test dummies for their amazing powers. Everyone knows that.
Anyone remember Paolini and his little quote on how he aims to emulate LOTR and Beowulf? Yeah, I’m feeling it myself too. In any case, Vendevorex and Jandra take their chance to make good their escape, and that ends the chapter.
Jerk on 24 April 2009, 18:13 said:
You’re an even greater jerk than I. I applaud you for your bravery.
swenson on 24 April 2009, 18:18 said:
Hmm, yeah. So why am I supposed to like Vendevorex again? He pretty much sounds like every villain ever made. And not even the good villains who you hate and love all at once- no, V-rex sounds like every awful, horribly-written cliched villain. If he’s actually good and cares about life, etc. etc., then he wouldn’t be killing people. Because he is, he’s a complete hypocrite… and nothing I’ve seen so far implies he was supposed to be that, either. He’s a hero that fails miserably at being a hero, but can’t quite be considered an anti-hero, because that would make him actually good.
James Brown on 24 April 2009, 18:29 said:
Decent article, but it’s more on the harsh side than actual amusement. It’s quite obvious that it is for the sole purpose of antagonising Mr. Maxey…ah well, I guess we all have ways of scratching our itch. Cheers, and more grease to your elbow.
Diamonte on 24 April 2009, 23:15 said:
Yeah, I’m kind of wondering why you wrote this – the way you’re antagonizing Mr. Maxey seems over the top to me. I mean, there really wasn’t any other point in this, was there? I think your Morally Ambiguous story is great from the excerpt I read, and your Description article was very informative. I hope that I’m not in the minority when I say that I’d rather see more of that and less of this ripping on random authors.
Marie on 25 April 2009, 00:36 said:
It hadn’t even occurred to me this was a hard sci-fi from your earlier sporks, just because the plot line just seemed so straight pulp fantasy. I mean, even magic in a created world has to have an internal/consistent logic within the story, but it can get away with a lot more without explanation (at least I think it can) rather than science. Just because you say Science doesn’t mean I’ll believe whatever you say. In fact, I’m more often skeptical, even though I don’t have much of a background, I’m not stupid, or at least try not to be.
Well, you know, even if Sam Vimes gave in to the shiny armor and tights, even he might have drawn the line at a silver skull cap wit a ruby. I have to say, that just seemed odd….I do think my favorite parts of the article were the references to Discworld. Apologies, I’m just something of a raging fangirl, though I try to keep fairly quiet. :)
Puppet on 25 April 2009, 10:06 said:
Nice article, though I personally think that Impishidea should do less of telling you what not to write, and more telling you what to write, though a balance of both would be nice too.
lccorp2 on 25 April 2009, 11:58 said:
I’ll be covering that in an upcoming article about Steven Brust.
OverlordDan on 25 April 2009, 12:29 said:
This. This. Thank you. This is my biggest hang up with adventure movies, books, video games, etc. If your not a main character, your life is forfeit.
I think the best example would be from the movie The Matrix, when they go to rescue Morpheous. The redshirt security guards are mowed down en mass for what is ultimitly nothing, since they go with the plan to use a helicopter to break him out.
Even though their mission is to save as many people from the computer as possible, even though they can spawn what seems to be limitless equipment, even though the guards have no idea that they are in a computer simulation, they are cut down for a (totally awesome) action sequence. And then blown up.
Sorry, I don’t feel like I’m getting my point accross. Great article, can’t wait for the next one.
ps I think the reason lccorp2’s ‘antagonizing’ Mr. Maxey is because he has been proven to read these, as well as give insight into his thought proccess about the issues lccorp2 brings up.
I could be dead wrong, though.
Morvius on 25 April 2009, 13:12 said:
It’s true, the last chapter really does not seem like something a protagonist would say unless he is bluffing… We are using Jandra’s PoV right? So I guess we can’t tell what Vendevorex is really thinking.
And…I really don’t think Mr. Maxey should have described the invisible powder in such detail, using scientific explanations. Because if it is inaccurate then…
enoch38b on 25 April 2009, 14:50 said:
Personally, I didn’t think the conversation with James Maxey contributed much. He’s dealing with heavy issues (the genocide of the human race) but doesn’t handle things with sensitivity, intelligence or finesse. I know he doesn’t mean to be insensitive, but he shouldn’t be playing around with these issues or treating them lightly. Congrats to Maxey for not getting butt-hurt, but Bitterwood is still a bad book and deserves some deconstruction.
Jerk on 25 April 2009, 15:03 said:
I hate deconstructionism in general because people who practice it delude themselves into thinking they understand the fictional form.
Bob on 26 April 2009, 06:36 said:
[quote]“The reason I’m being so anal about the science involved here is because in claiming this is post-apocalyptic Earth with a general technology level lower than that of what we have today, this novel locked itself into a “hard” science fiction paradigm,”[/quote]
Do you really think that being set in a post apocalyptic Earth makes it hard Science Fiction? Was Mad Max or Fallout hard Science Fiction? Of course they weren’t, Hard Sci Fi is all about exploring realy world Science, I don’t think a story about dragons ruling over humans in the future is anywhere near that.
This story is about as hard as Farscape.
lccorp2 on 26 April 2009, 08:26 said:
@Bob: I’ve already explained that it’s not just the post-apocalyptic setting, which enforces some of the basic rules which readers are going to import from the real world.
Fallout? I don’t remember Fallout trying to explain away the more “magical” aspects, from rad-roaches to the brahmins. It didn’t go “Oh-ho! This is really science!” at every opportunity; it just let things be and allowed one to exercise one’s suspension of disbelief at one’s own discretion. It didn’t go out of its way to say “tee-hee! This is really a manhole/subway/some ancient building from the past, which is our present-day Earth!”
Pern and this book keep on pointing at the “magical” aspects of their conworlds and doing just that, sometimes complete with detailed descriptions of what’s supposedly going on in “scientific” terms, so I’m just giving them what they asked for. They want to keep on mentioning it over and over again, so be it.
Jerk on 26 April 2009, 14:46 said:
I think that you’re just projecting that they’re claiming perfect scientific accuracy. More often than not, the science is just a vehicle for story, not the other way around, and if it is inaccurate it doesn’t matter, because no one reads a fiction story for the facts. Everyone does it, but why aren’t you a dick to them too? I mean, have you seen the nonsense people pass off as science? Merely understanding things qualitatively is not enough; you need to know the math to be really understand it at all.
So why don’t you go on a rampage against the Discovery Channel as well? Why don’t you go punch Michio Kaku in the face?
Then again, you honestly don’t seem to understand why stories revolve around humans and human-like entities. You really have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to fiction. You are just really, really angry, and perhaps think that your knowledge of the physical sciences gives you superiority to cut people down, despite your utter ignorance of fiction in general.
This article disgusts me, to be honest. I do not appreciate the tone at all. However bad a writer Maxey is, he did not deserve this. Criticism like this does not push anyone to improve; rather it causes them to quit altogether.
I suggest you lie alone in your room for a while and think about what you did. I’ll be waiting right here.
See, being talked down to doesn’t feel nice, does it?
James Brown on 26 April 2009, 15:19 said:
lol@ Jerk. Damn! you really know how to lay it out…lol
Marisu on 26 April 2009, 17:09 said:
Well, I enjoy these. Too bad the coolness of Mr. Maxey ended up making other people panic about criticism. Just because an author actually stood up for himself doesn’t mean that his not-so-good book should be exempt from criticism.
“This article disgusts me, to be honest. I do not appreciate the tone at all. However bad a writer Maxey is, he did not deserve this. Criticism like this does not push anyone to improve; rather it causes them to quit altogether.”
If humorous criticism bothers you, why did you bother reading it? Yeah, it’s a bit harsh, but it doesn’t go ad hominem, as you have.
I think what lccorp2 was annoyed at is the pretentiousness of the “science system,” and the fact that the thing would have been more pleasureable to read without the pseudo-science that serves no real purpose.
But whatever. I’m just going to be sorry to see these Bitterwood spork/crits stop, as they inevitably will now that people are being butthurt about it.
Jerk on 26 April 2009, 17:41 said:
shrugs
You think it’s funny, I don’t. Because half the things he says are so, so wrong and show the author of the article as an incompetent critic bashing an incompetent author.
If you really want to look at a pot calling a kettle black, go right ahead, I won’t stop you. I myself have serious doubts about the authority of the submitter now, and anything he says from now on will be taken as pure jest. He took the joke way too far, till it seems like the only thing we find humor in is him putting down an undeveloped writer and all his attempts, possibly for good.
Perhaps you are still convinced that it is possible for any artist to not feel connected to his work and take any criticism objectively. That is pure rubbish, mostly spoken by people who themselves produce little or act tough on the outside, or who really don’t invest their souls to create. The truth is when we spend so long working on something, we feel that it is part of us; our creation. To have some bloke just come around and wipe his ass on it will definitely be a blow to the artist himself. Maybe he is right; maybe its so bad it can only be toilet paper. But maybe he could also say it in a less cruel way, more funny to the both of us, where we can grin and say “Yeah, that’s right”.
I myself don’t want any writer to ever just give up and walk away. Skills improve only with constant practice. But to have someone say you have absolutely no worthy skills, nothing to grow from, is to have that person slap you in the face and then piss in your mouth.
I doubt very, very, very much the OP would appreciate a criticism this biting and ruthless on anything he has written. He might say he does, but rather I think he simple won’t bring his works for critique as much as a defensive reaction. And without critique, you cannot grow.
See the paradox here? Criticize too hard, and nobody learns. Criticize too easy, still nobody learns. Balance is the key, and this is nothing but a contest at seeing how far he can push the envelope.
I mean why did he take it to this level once he knows the author is here now, reading this?
Relayer on 26 April 2009, 17:55 said:
Michio Kaku is cool
CGilga on 26 April 2009, 18:39 said:
I thought lccorp2 posted their (sorry, I’m unsure of your gender) story on the forum.
Jerk on 26 April 2009, 18:49 said:
And I purposely left it alone because I did not want to cross his/her ego, but now I see I have no choice.
lccorp2 on 26 April 2009, 19:06 said:
@Marisu: I don’t stand by the “don’t read it if you don’t like it” defense, so I won’t use it to shield myself, either. People are free to read what they want.
You phrased it better too. It’s trying so hard to be “hard” and not let the handwaving take place, so fine.
@Jerk: Ah, E-drama, the staple of the internet. Are you actually going to attack the points made in the critique, since you claim that I’m completely wrong, or are you going to continue making argumentum ad personam at me? Every argument you’ve made against me has been unsupported.
Still, I’ll humour you.
—“No one reads a fiction story for the facts.” Have you read Dan Brown, especially Da Vinci Code and Digital Fortress? When the facts are required as to continual suspension of disbelief, and sometimes the whole premise, I’d say they become important in the scope of things.
No, it didn’t have to be that way for this book. I would have been completely willing to accept dragon-people living with humans. I’ve written about dragon-people, some of which were too heavy for the humanoid bipedal structure to support. I didn’t break immersion and throw away suspension of disbelief by trying to justify everything with “science”.
Please give examples where I am wrong again. Oh, and by the way, Discovery Channel all-too-often puts out the equivalent of what Terry Pratchett calls “lies-to-children”. Still, I don’t know very much about subjects out of my scope, and usually give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve already explained clearly why I don’t rap on Star Trek. Which reminds me. Why don’t you go and be annoyed at criticisms of Twilight and Inheritance here? Look, I can use that argument too! Oh, and presumption of authorial intent! Are you a mind-reader? See what I did there?
Please. I don’t talk about gothic literature, marine biology, or the writing style of Alexandre Dumas because I don’t have very much knowledge of those subjects. I’m not an English major and can’t speak the jargon, but I like to think I know something about what makes good SF/F, and you’re free to try and disprove me.
—Next point on how I supposedly don’t understand why humanoids feature so highly in fiction, which I don’t see has got anything to do with this argument, but I’ll happily oblige:
I am aware of the trope of Most writers are human . I am perfectly aware of the fact that describing how a colony of ten-legged sentient pigs works might take up a sizable chunk of a story, slowing it down, or that we readers as humans like to identify with humans. I am perfectly aware, too, that in where it applies, actors are also human, which leads to the prevalence of rubber-forehead aliens. I understand that readers, faced with alien morals and values (translation: not compatible with 20th and 21st-century western attitudes), may balk.
The problem here is that we’re dealing with speculative fiction. You’re supposed to use your imagination here and explore beyond the boundaries—while making sure things still make sense within the conworld and paradigm you’ve set down. If you’re going to, for example, glue wings onto humans, it’s up to you to consider all the potential consequences, physical, social, mental, spiritual. For example, we humans perceive the world in a rather two-dimensional manner (which is why zombie hands bursting out of the earth and grabbing people’s ankles have added shock value; unless specially looking out for something, humans tend not to look out for danger up or down), while birds and fish, for example, which live in a three-dimensional world, will react to danger above or below them (of course, other physical features come into play).
I’m sorry if this offends you, but I believe that non-humans who aren’t just humans with a few superficial traits that don’t really matter stuck on, and who actually follow a moral system that’s the product of their own history, environment and culture are better than those who blindly adhere to or dismiss modern western values just because they’re holding the protagonist or antagonist ball, are better.
—I won’t deny there is a certain level of schadenfreude in doing this. Still, I have a writing sample on the II forums, and you’re free to take it apart. It’s already been there for a while. In fact, I’d be very pleased if you took it apart in the manner which I take apart other peoples’ works.
And no, I’m not going to be stupid enough to post the entirety of a manuscript in a public, unsecured forum and throw away my first print rights, thank you very much.
—So we’ve shifted the focus now onto me, eh? No, I can’t stop people from loving what they love. I can’t stop people from eating at McDonald’s. That doesn’t somehow negate my right to say why I don’t believe McDonald’s is good for you, complete with my reasoning why. I have given credit where it’s due, so don’t say I claimed someone had “absolutely no worthy skills”. Oh, and I don’t think Mr. Maxey is going to stop writing anytime soon.
Sorry, I don’t buy into “You’re being mean! Shut up!” especially when there’re points being made.
Does it matter if the manager of the local McDonald’s is sitting right next to me? So his feelings get hurt when I say McDonald’s isn’t the healthiest food on Earth. So? Are we going to shut people up about the health risks of McDonald’s just because someone’s self-esteem might suffer? And no, I don’t believe that just because someone (me included) invested themselves in their work, it should suddenly become immune to scathing, deserved criticism.
I’ve already toned down some of the more provocative language and gotten rid of the failscore, amongst other matters. If that’s not enough for you, tough beans. I’ve been in enough critique circles and seen enough people get nicely-worded, very well thought-out critiques, take them, say “oh, thank you” and then ignore them completely. An aggressive style won’t be winning me any friends, but at the very least, it’ll be provoking a reaction. The manager of the McDonald’s will (hopefully) be compelled to either defend his products or change them.
I’ve got a socio exam in two hours, so I’ll just leave with one thing. You’re free to think whatever you want about me and my intentions. But if you want to get into a debate, please attack the points I made, substantiate your statements, and don’t evade points made.
James Maxey on 26 April 2009, 19:52 said:
“However bad a writer Maxey is, he did not deserve this. Criticism like this does not push anyone to improve; rather it causes them to quit altogether.”
Howdy once more. I just got back from Ravencon (in Richmond, VA, the ispiration for the setting of Bitterwood, of all places) and couldn’t resist peeking in at the ongoing sporkage.
Jerk, I appreciate you’re jumping to my defense (albeit in a somewhat backward manner), but I’d like to assure you that no true writer has ever been set off track by even the most savage criticism. I attended Odyssey in 1998, when the writer guest of honor was Harlan Ellison, one of my all time heroes. Harlan has a reputation of being something of a buzzsaw when it comes to critiques and opinions, and, sweet merciful Jesus, I walked right into that saw. His critiques were so harsh it literally caused one person to quit the class and go home in the middle of the night, and another wound up in the hospital with chest pains. I wound up crying for, like, four hours straight after a week of his critiques, and I was one of the writers at the class whose work he kind of liked. I had a typo in the first sentence of my story, using “it’s” where I should have used “its” and he circled it and wrote in the margins I wrote like a “goddamn illiterate redneck.” He later went on in the same story to say I was telling a good story, and had potential, but I still ended the week feeling like I was an utter failure.
Anyway, I shed some tears, spent a week depressed, then went on to write all the stories I would later sell. Part of my breakthrough was that Ellison had convinced me I wasn’t good enough to make a living at writing. So, before Odyssey, I’d been obsessive about reading Asimov’s and F&SF and trying to figure out how to write the type of stories they were buying. I also used to read best selling authors and try to figure out the secrets of what they were writing, even though I frequently didn’t enjoy their work. After Odyssey, since I didn’t obsess about making a living writing, I really just wrote for the sheer psychic release of it. I wrote stories I knew that could never be published because they were too weird or unclassifiable, like “Perhaps the Snail,” a nihilist manifesto that contains a sex act so unthinkable you can’t even google it.
For three years, I didn’t submit a single story, though I wrote about a dozen, plus my novel Nobody Gets the Girl.
Then, I put my toes back into the water when Phobos books started a story contest. I won the first year, saw my novel sold the next, and have went on to place stories with Asimov’s, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and about a dozen anthologies. I hardly ever submit stories to slush anymore… the last several stories I’ve sold, editors solicited stories from me. I’ve never won an award except for the Phobos award, but I will have a story in the next Fantasy: Best of the Year anthology. And, of course, there have been the Dragon Age novels.
I’m not bragging here: I’m just trying to make a point that the worst, most foul criticism of your work isn’t going to discourage a person who really has writing in their bones. I find a lot of criticism useful, nodding my head when I see something I’ve been doing that I was unaware of. Other criticism just makes me shrug; it really is true that noone is going to write in a fashion that everyone will love, and some people are just going to dislike your writing. Just write as best you can; it’s a common fallacy of the unpublished to think that you have to be flawless in order to connect with readers. In my experience, sometimes a work has a better shot if it’s still a little raw.
Finally, there’s other criticism that’s just factually wrong; Llcorp2 blasted me for the impossibility of 40 foot wing spans. I knew about of fossil examples that disproved his point, but what can I do? My books aren’t treatises on biology. He didn’t think live birth was possible for a creature with scales and claws. Again, there are plenty of real life examples of beasts with spikey and pointy bits reproducing, but not all readers are going to know about them, and not all readers are going to care. In this article, he blast Vendevorex for killing guards because their life is cheap; in fact, Ven doesn’t kill a single guard during his escape. Zanzeroth plainly knows that Ven isn’t standing where the guards pile on. He throws his knife at a different location, and hits the fleeing wizard. The guard who dies isn’t killed by Ven, but by the other guards who are piling on and trying to hit an invisible foe. Ven doesn’t even kill the one guard who almost catches them. (There is a larger point that could be argued that I didn’t overly much value the life of the guards, but I’m hardly the first writer to grind up the extras, and I do try at several points in the book to give POV’s to characters I plan to kill to make them more real before they get snuffed.)
Llcorp must be aware that Ven has fled the room and isn’t slaughtering anyone, since he cuts out the paragraph in the scene where Zanzeroth attacks Ven in a different location. On the other hand, maybe he genuinely missed it since he’s not so much reading for the story as he is to build a case. What actually happened in the scene isn’t as important to the article as what he assumed would happen. Once you’re no longer immersed in a story, these things happen. You skim until you find something that reinforces your opinion, then move on.
I do find these articles entertaining. It’s always interesting to overhear a conversation about yourself. It’s just human nature. And, bluntly, I’m flattered he took the time to read the book and discuss it. Talking about the book generates interest in it in at least some small percentage of readers. My book isn’t Eragon. It’s in bookstores, but it’s not a big enough bestseller to be in Walmart of a truckstop, which is the true measure of literary success. It’s likely that no one here had even heard of Bitterwood before these articles. There really is no such thing as bad publicity. Should Llcorp wish to write me, I’ll be happy to mail him copies of my other books for similar treatment.
In fact, if anyone is interested in reading more of Bitterwood, but feel iffy about spending your hard earned dimes on a work that’s undergone such a rough review, send me an email at nobodynovelwriter@yahoo.com and I’ll email you a digital copy. Who knows? You might enjoy it enough to peek at my other books.
CGilga on 26 April 2009, 20:19 said:
Despite all this, lccorp2, you have failed to address the most important question.
Are you a guy, or a girl? I hate using gender neutral pronouns, especially for a person.
Jerk on 26 April 2009, 21:06 said:
You have again no idea what Coleridge meant when talking about suspense of disbelief, do you? He was referring to the meaning of the story, the characters. He wasn’t referring to the facts; he was referring to the way the author wrote his story. Is there enough reason presented for us to believe the character would behave this way? Is the voice strong, the descriptions apt? You are taking it way too literally and not thinking about what the badly expressed statement really means.
To take an example consider expressionist story. Here the reality is not what makes us suspend our disbelief, it is the way it is written. What you are doing is disliking something personally and trying to justify why its correct objectively, and it is failing badly. Suspense of disbelief has nothing to do with what you imply it does. And this misinformation is bad for beginning writers to believe at all, because it sets them back rather than forward. They can very well use faulty science, illogical contradictions, and still make the most believable stories ever. While his story may not be believable, at least get your reasoning right before trying to critique it. Or he may try to ‘improve’ as a writer by following faulty advice.
I do also dislike most of the Inheritance and Twilight rants here too because they too do not touch upon the real reasons the books fail to be good writing. Rather they are filled with lots of inane nitpicking and misguided reasons as to why the books fail, but I can always think of great books of the top of my head that discredit these stupid reasons. This is just nitpicking—after deciding the books already suck. But at least with Inheritance and Twilight the authors aren’t here to read these silly ideas, and so in time they might discover for themselves what to really do to become better writers—I hope.
Regarding human values, all fiction is about them. Even if you have aliens, humans read them and apply their own values to them. You think human values in stories are only about the last two centuries of western literature? You are wrong. Human values in literature are global conditions most humans can inherently recognize. Even something alien, when written by humans, is about human values.
To take an example, consider an alien race that is like primordial soup: that at some point in their life they join mind, bodies, souls—giving up their individual suffering and pains to become part of a collective happiness. You can bet that the value that will be challenged in this story will be individuals versus society. An important question that will be raised is “if only the individual can suffer, and the group cannot, is surrendering autonomy beneficial to all, or is there a truly price to pay; and if so, to what extent?” The answer to this question is important for humans, not for aliens. Perhaps for an alien the answer is clear; but for humans the answer is not. Humans are the ones reading it, and the exploration of the question to the vast depths of human experience are what keeps people turning pages.
This is a global conflict through all of human history, not just the west, or the east, or the north, or the south. The story explores this in a fresh and insightful light. Even though the values may seem alien to the world we are in today, they are greater questions that deal with the human psyche and inner conflict.
What you are requesting is impossible. If there is nothing of relation to human experience in the story, then it shall bore the readers. Even as we look at foreign values, we are always trying to connect them to experiences or thoughts we have as individuals.
The fact that you are even requesting this shows that you do not understand how stories operate. You are asking for something new; but what you really seek is something interesting, a new slant on an old value that provokes the mind and touches the spirit. There is nothing new in fiction. Everything is a repeat of before but with more playing around and perspectives. Please understand this.
I want to take it apart, but at the same time I cannot bring myself to read it all. Suffice to say there is a problem with what I like to call ‘fanfic-itis’. While an original work of fiction, it still reads like fanfiction, what with the floating heads, forced dialogue, and self-conscious style. I am not even sure if I can help you, because you do not understand fiction is in general. You do not understand what suspense of disbelief refers to, and I think it’s safe to say you may not understand storytelling either—leaving presentation matters aside. Maybe you do understand stories—I don’t know, didn’t read it all. But even if I tried at this point, I cannot help you, because at this point you will try to justify all your gross misconceptions to save face.
Of course you are entitled to your opinions, as I am entitled to mine. In my opinion almost anything you complained about can and should be ignored by everyone serious in writing, because a majority of it is misguided.
Maxey:
“On the other hand, maybe he genuinely missed it since he’s not so much reading for the story as he is to build a case. What actually happened in the scene isn’t as important to the article as what he assumed would happen. Once you’re no longer immersed in a story, these things happen. You skim until you find something that reinforces your opinion, then move on.”
Bingo. This is what I mean by him not even understanding what really irks him. While there are indeed things that need to be improved, he is giving more focus to really innane nitpicking.
Marie on 26 April 2009, 23:08 said:
I’m sorry but… “the true measure of literary success” is NOT finding a book in Walmart or at a truck stop! It has nothing to do with bestseller lists…it has to do with the longevity and how long a work of literature will be read as such. The bestseller list, whichever one it is, is simply a measure of the effectiveness of the ad campaign behind it! Deep breath Again, sorry. That just kinda made me kerflail.
Relayer on 26 April 2009, 23:16 said:
I disagree. The true measure of literary success is finding your book in Walmart or at a truck stop.
James Maxey on 27 April 2009, 00:25 said:
Marie, I do think there’s something to be said for writing a book that stands the test of time. Unfortunately, we won’t know today what people are going to be reading a century from now. Sometimes, the work that comes down to us is obscure in its own time—Emily Dickenson, for instance, or Melville. Other times, however, the work is, in fact, popular fiction sold in the Walmart’s of the era—Charles Dickens was writing for mass, popular consumption, as was Shakespeare. Twain, too, was trying to make a buck or two. I really think you get into the 20th Century before you get to the assumption that just because something is popular it’s likely to be bad.
As for my truck stop comment, seriously, don’t knock the books that get sold at Walmart and truckstops. Any fool with a word processor can get a book sold in a book store. Book stores specialize in this product. They cater to people who have specifically come into a store to search out a book.
A truck stop, or a supermarket, or Walmart, on the other hand, are going to have a very limited selection of books. These books are going to be there for a very simple reason: People read them and enjoy them. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who weren’t English majors snap them up and read them even though they could do other things with their time. The books that make it into Walmart are there competing against big screen TV’s, cases of Pepsi, and whatever the hot video game system of the moment is. They are there because they are good enough to be read by people who don’t go out of their way to buy books.
If you love reading, and you love the thought of people reading, then it’s tough to see how anyone could tear down these books.
Not that I haven’t been guilty. I remember about ten years ago, I saw a novel sitting at my Mom’s house by someone along the line of Jaqueline Steele, or some other big name romance writer. I instantly regarded the book as trash, and made a joke that I’d be embarrassed to leave something like that out where anyone could see it. My mom told me it was actually the best book she’d ever read. I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes, and at the moment thought she just wouldn’t know a good book if it bit her on the knees.
Now… seriously, who am I to tell her what is or isn’t the best book she ever read? If she enjoys reading a formulaic romance, so be it… I don’t have to read it or like it, but I can’t say that she’s reading the wrong stuff, any more than I can tell people they are listening to the wrong music, or watching the wrong movies.
The fact is, bookstores are a vanishing commodity in American life. Barnes and Noble and Borders pushed out most of the small stores, and now Borders will likely be gone before the end of the year. Once Borders is gone, there will be 21 Barnes and Nobles left in NC—a state of 10 million people. And, of these 21 stores, most are located in only a few cities. There are five or six in the Raleigh/Durham area, about the same in Charlotte, leaving another ten scattered through the rest of the state. Add a few more chains that linger on, like BooksaMillion, and a handful of independent stores, like the Regulator in Durham, and you probably have 50 to 60 bookstores left in the state—again, concentrated in the two or three big urban areas. The vast majority of counties in NC do not have a book store. Probably close to 90% of incorporated towns have not a single bookstore.
On the other hand, almost every county has dozens of grocery stores, and a majority have a Walmart or two or five. If you are a writer who wants people in North Carolina to see your book and pick it up, where would you rather be? In 50 book stores? Or in 500 grocery stores?
Look, you and everyone here are free to write the kinds of book you want to write. But, for the love of god, why on earth would any writer find it a productive and useful to despise the best outlet for putting his or her work into the hands of readers? And, more importantly, why would you despise the majority of readers? Why assume that the people who pick up Twilight or Eragon or The Bridges of Madison County or Left Behind are ignorant, barely literate schlubs unworthy of your time and effort to engage?
On the flip side, if you don’t enjoy the sort of books you find in supermarkets, please don’t try to write them. You won’t enjoy it, and you won’t succeed. But, don’t gripe or resent the success of others, or dismiss it as mere hype or marketing. It just reveals that you are unable to find beauty and meaning and truth where millions of other find beauty and meaning and truth. And this is fine! I find no beauty, meaning, or truth at all in the Left Behind series, for example. Never, ever, ever going to attempt to write a book that would appeal to the people who read them. But, I don’t envy the authors their space in bookstores, and can admire their ability to communicate with far more people than I will able be able to connect with. And, if I had a time machine and could go back and strangle all these popular writers in their cradle… we wouldn’t find “better” books in the stores today. We’d likely find no books, since there wouldn’t be the writers with the ability to reach the masses. And if publishers didn’t have income from bestsellers, mainstream publishers would fold, or specialize only in non-fiction. The novel would go the way of the poem… a respected artistic hobby, something you might even be admired for doing, but a complete dead end as a product you might sell to more than a tiny handful of people.
Seriously, if you ever run into Stephanie Meyers, shake her hand and thank her for helping novels survive as a popular art form for at least a few more years. She’s done nothing to earn your hatred. She’s out there creating readers. Maybe one day, you can convince a reader she created to read you, but you won’t do it by tearing her down. You’ll do it by writing a book that you fill with your own truth, beauty, and meaning, and doing it with enough sincerity that you make that elusive connection to readers who are searching for these things.
End rant. Thank you.
Artimaeus on 27 April 2009, 01:33 said:
Jerk, aren’t you overreacting a little? It’s just an article, and it does address cliches that, while one needn’t necessarily avoid at all costs, one should at least be aware of.
I agree here with lccorp2 in that maintaining a certain degree of scientific accuracy is beneficial to the story. If the best explanation you can muster for your phelibotinum is clearly implausible and veers into pseudo-science, you’d probably be better not explaining how your uncanny tech works and moving on with your story.
Likewise, many writers, especially amateurs (Paolini), have their “heroes” proclaiming their love of all life one moment, and slaughtering foes the next. Now, without access to the source material, I can’t say whether or not Mr. Maxey repeated this mistake (though if lccorp2 misread that section, her credibility will drop rather quickly). But if more writers were made aware of this tendency, we wouldn’t see it nearly as often.
I honestly don’t think that this kind criticism is going to turn people away from writing. The points raised are valid; one can be aware of potential pitfalls without being paralyzed by the fear of making them. And if nothing else, this will show writers how to respond gracefully to criticism.
Jerk on 27 April 2009, 01:49 said:
I agree. I definitely want the book I plan on publishing to reach as many people as possible.
I read your blog Maxey, and I agree with everything you said, but there is one thing I do not agree with: that it is impossible to learn through analysis and concentration. While it is impossible to write good books without the ability to feel the words on paper, it is also very necessary to be able to use the left side of the brain too. In fact, the only way to master anything is to be able to use both sides at once. That’s pretty much my idea on the matter.
Why is it that you feel it is impossible to use the rigorous part of your mind when writing fiction? What are your thoughts on this, as a fellow writer?
Artimeus, the thing is lccorp2 is bitching about the silliest things I’ve ever seen. The type of things where no one really learns anything, but it becomes a personal vendetta against the book just for the purpose of existing. The reasoning is stupid if one thinks carefully about them, and finds plenty of cases where it makes no sense whatsoever to listen to the advice. Granted I’ve only recently started frequenting this place, but do you honestly think this is not counter-productive and in fact downright mean spirited and trollish?
Maxey has a lot of balls. Because honestly, if lccorp2 did this to me, in this harsh fashion, I would judo chop him to the throat, if not give up on writing all together.
Legion on 27 April 2009, 02:05 said:
That’s a good point and one that shouldn’t be immediately dismissed. But neither should the one that Marie made be either. In the end, I would say that the entire argument hinges what an author’s definition of “literary success” is. Is it longevity, as in Marie’s case? Is it number of copies sold at the end of the day? Or some other factor entirely? There really isn’t an absolute right or wrong answer for something that’s as subjective on an individual basis as the definition of success.
I can’t speak for fans of Left Behind or Bridges, but I can answer this question in relation to Inheritance and Twilight. I’m going to have to go back to ancient history so bear with me…
When Paolini’s first Inheritance book Eragon came out, it got alot of hype and gained enormous popularity rather quickly. Fans of the book praised it like it was written by the hand of god, the be-all and end-all of fantasy stories. On sites like IMDB, more critical readers would attempt to point out that Eragon wasn’t all that great but rather than get intelligent counterarguments, were basically told to STFU and GTFO. Yes, just like that and in other equally juvenile ways. Sites like shurtugal.com also made the mistake of attempting to forcefully censor anyone who didn’t like the book (by banning, etc). And of course, the anonymous of the internets didn’t take to that kind of heavy-handed violation of what they perceived as their First Amendment rights very kindly, so naturally a counter movement rose. The most vociferous of the critics gathered on anti-shurtugal.com and began posting articles (not unlike those here on II) picking apart Eragon. Now, imagine vitriolic criticism like the type lccorp2 has been unleashing on Bitterwood against a novel that was enjoying immense popularity and near blind devotion from readers aged 11-14.
Yes, unlike yourself, the majority of Inheritance fans didn’t take the criticism very gracefully at all. Rather than try to defend their favorite book in any logical manner, they retaliated by spamming in nonsensical leetspeak. For an example of the usual Inheritance-fan rhetoric please see this post. And with arguments like, “You’re just jealous of Paolini’s success,” “You people should go get a life,” “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all,” ect. As you can also see from the example post, the same applied to fans of Meyer’s Twilight series when the Inheritance critics began to disassemble the Twilight books in addition to Inheritance. It really never failed. You get well-spoken people writing logical critiques on Twilight and Inheritance, but the fans who disagreed with the points being made in the critique were incapable of any sort of intelligent rebuttal.
Like I mentioned previously, alot of the hardcore Inheritance and Twilight fans spamming in retaliation were also very young. You really can’t expect people of that age to be able to compete with the analytical and rhetorical skill of the college and post-college educated people who were writing the critiques either. So by comparison, the Inheritance and Twilight fandom gained the reputation of “ignorant, barely literate schlubs unworthy of our time and effort to engage.”
I’m not saying that everyone who liked Inheritance and Twilight were like that. There are plenty of people who like Paolini’s and Meyer’s books here at II who are plenty well-spoken. But the majority of them were just as you said. The “rabid fandom’s” reputation for inanity and the critic’s exasperation with them didn’t come out of nowhere and isn’t entirely unjustified.
Unfortunately, James, you’re a rarity on a site like II. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Whether someone agrees or disagrees with what you say, whether they like your books or not, it doesn’t matter. You’re a well-spoken person we can converse with on the same level. And that’s more than enough.
Proserpina FC on 27 April 2009, 02:30 said:
Hmmm… I would guess that the thing about harsh criticism isn’t that the Sporker has a vendetta against any particular author, but that the state of these bad-cliche-misused tropes as a whole piss him (and all of us) off.
Cartoonish villains? Dime-a-dozen. And every author claims that because they “aren’t trying to write Shakespeare” they don’t have to try harder. (Nevermind that Shakespeare’s villains were a bit cartoonish, but only in private. ;) In public, they knew to shut their giddy villainy and act.)
Incompetent antagonists? The bane of any hope of suspense or tension in a story, yet present all the same because who in their right mind would make saving the day difficult?!
Little apparent understanding of science, geography or philosophy? Who has time to research? And why call it fantasy if it has to make sense?
Default setting to Western understandings, geography, climate, and culture? Little REAL, plot-affecting worldbuilding? No attempt to deepen the races beyond Unfortunate stereotypes or brash generalizations? Come on, who really cares? The book only exists for some fight scenes and a quick romance. LOLOLOLOLOLOL
……..
Dealing with this kind of environment, it is easy to be a bit harsh.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 02:39 said:
@Jerk: Please stop misrepresenting my arguments and attempting to obfuscate, followed by more argumentum ad personam. I never claimed the definition of suspension of disbelief was the requirement of facts to ensure the continued suspension of judgement as to the plausibility of the narrative. What I DID say, as per my quote, was that in these PARTICULAR cases, it is LINKED to it.
“Have you read Dan Brown, especially Da Vinci Code and Digital Fortress? When the facts are required as to continual suspension of disbelief, and sometimes the whole premise, I’d say they become important in the scope of things.”
Note that I never said getting the facts right was part of suspension of disbelief.
I’ll quote Kippurbird on her analysis of the Da Vinci Code:
It’s a similar case as to what I interpret happens in Bitterwood after the appearance of manholes, Really Advanced Robots, interstate highways, etc, etc. When Dan Brown makes his factual errors during the course of the narrative, it interferes with the acceptance of the premises he’s set down, because he’s (in this case, explicitly, or in Bitterwood, implicitly) stated that part of the premises involves adhering to some basic facts.
—Next up, another misrepresentation of my argument. Not ONCE did I say I wanted the theme of the story to be completely alien; heck, I didn’t even say the non-humans had to be completely alien or even non-humanoid. What I was asking for was for them to make sense according to their supposed backgrounds; I’ve read stories where the traditional hexapod, quadruped dragons wore humanlike clothes and surrounded themselves with crude mockeries of human furniture. This, supposedly, was due to them not having opposable thumbs. Steven Brust’s Draegaerans don’t knock on doors the way humans in the same world do; they clap their hands outside because knocking on doors in a world where every citizen of the Empire is a wizard to some extent is a very good way to surreptitiously place a spell on someone’s home.
I fail to see how wanting things to make sense is incompatible with exploring themes and values which are relevant to humanity, but I’m sure that’s just my stupid, ignorant, and uneducated mind talking.
By the way, what’s the human value in Little Red Riding Hood? Both the sanitized version we have today, and the other one which Neil Gaiman’s writing was kind enough to get me interested in? “Don’t get into bed with wolves pretending to be your granny?”
—That suspiciously sounds like an excuse to back out while saving face.
Re: MA, the talking-head thing is intentional. I’m not one to do great amounts of description, and MA is satire, which means I expect potential readers to be familiar with the stereotypical settings (ye olde standard fantasy tavern, for example) and slot them in as and when needed. Besides, it’s not the amount of description which matters with talking heads, it’s what you do with it. I’m trying to learn from the style of Steven Brust and Jo Walton when it comes to this, especially the former.
*The style is intentionally forced and self-conscious, because it is, y’know, satire?
I’m through with you, Jerk. During the course of this conversation, you’ve:
—Repeatedly evaded arguments either by outright ignoring them, or going off on tangents and then obfuscating, attempting to force me into a defensive position.
—Repeatedly attacked my person in manners which have absolutely nothing to do with the validity of my arguments.
—Repeatedly made unsubstantiated statements (Oh, really. How is a reasoning that supposedly likable protagonist being a hypocrite, or at least, posed by the text as one, “stupid reasoning” or “the silliest things you’ve ever seen”? Ditto for cheesy, over-the-top names which seriously harm how threatening the antagonists are?)
—Repeatedly misrepresented my arguments to your advantage, claiming I got the points completely wrong when I was never arguing that point in the first place.
—Used shaming and condescending language in an attempt to shut me up.
—Made threats of physical violence against me. This is when I know I’m doing good. =)
It’s a shame. You do seem like an intelligent person on the forums, and the results of the writing exercises are interesting. But what do I know? I’m just a layman, an engineering major, not an English one. Maybe you are, I don’t know; you do seem like you can speak the jargon. I’m just someone who has been reading and writing SF/F for quite a while and who likes to speak up when his sensibilities get offended. But thanks to your argumentative style, your credibility to me has immediately plonked to zero, and you’re acting like someone who just got told his or her best book ever wasn’t perfect. You claim I have a vendetta against the book, ignoring everything to that effect, yet are hypocritical in the fact that you’ve certainly taken up a vendetta against me, ignoring everything to that effect.
After all the vitriol you’ve thrown at me, I think I should reciprocate the favour. To paraphrase Tseric:
You are nothing to me.
You are a troll.
You are now being ignored.
You will be forgotten.
Godspeed. =)
@Mr. Maxey: Thank you for putting up with me, sir, and coming back to discuss the bookwith us once more. I’m afraid I don’t have the book with me right now, since I’m between papers, but I’ll reread the required lines and see where the bit is.
I’ll discuss this further when I get back to my room.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 02:48 said:
Ah. My bad. I’ll go look at the post you made on the topic in more detail.
Jerk on 27 April 2009, 03:21 said:
I could rebuff every one of your points about literature, include Da Vinci Code, but you know what? Forget it. Have fun complaining about retarded things. Have fun looking like an idiot who is just blabbering on about things he doesn’t understand. Have fun antagonizing people; contributing nothing positive whatsoever. Have fun kicking sand into peoples eyes and claiming it teaches anyone anything. Because quite frankly, I’ve lost my patience with you.
It is you who are the troll. Enjoy your vitriolic sporking. Enjoy coming off every time as a person just looking for excuses to hate something. Enjoy thinking your sarcasm is hilarious, even though many of your talking points are just plain wrong. Enjoy the fact that it makes you look like a hypocrite with an agenda.
I am never wondering into another one of these articles of yours again. They anger me greatly. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, you could admit that you are just pulling reasons out of your ass and apologize for being needlessly harsh here, but you won’t do either.
Maybe one day you will realize that everything you think is right now is so, so misguided, but until that time comes I cannot be of any use to you or anyone else here. So you know what? Good bye, sir. Have fun bashing writers stupidly and thinking it will benefit you in the long run. Maybe all your friends might high-five you for it, but at the end of the day no one learns anything.
Maybe time and failure can help you better than anything I share can.
This “troll” will leave you to your own devices now.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 03:35 said:
A note to Sly:
If you think these things aren’t worth the e-drama they bring, feel free to tell me so. They won’t show up here again, although those interested can still peruse them on Kippurbird’s Eragon-sporkings wikispace.
SlyShy on 27 April 2009, 05:01 said:
I think the discussion (in so far as it has stayed away from ad hominems) has been entertaining, and perhaps educational. The civility is breaking down somewhat, but I’ve no reason to think we can’t be gentlemen and ladies on the internet. So I’m inclined to let the situation remain status quo.
Jerk has said he won’t read what you write, which has basically fulfilled the “if you don’t like it, then don’t read it” phrase, so I see no reason why you shouldn’t continue. In fact, since Mr. Maxey seems to be encouraging you rather than discouraging you, you might as well humor him. ;) Certainly we are promoting awareness of his writing, and we have a decent audience size, so he’s not complaining.
james brown on 27 April 2009, 05:37 said:
Hi Everyone, I cant seem to be able to find a HARRY POTTER sporkage anywhere on the web…Now c’mon, I know JK is a brilliant writer and believe it or not I’m a huge fan, but surely she can’t be that good. Or is she? Cheers
Diamonte on 27 April 2009, 07:38 said:
I personally think that posting these personal vendettas against James Maxey isn’t helping anyone else learn to write better – that’s the point of the site, isn’t it? I’m very, very glad that these will be in the forum from now on.
Also, I have to point out that lccorp2 keeps referring to ad hominem [hope I spelled that right, but forgive me if I didn’t] attacks by Jerk. However, he has done the same thing on the site – remember her comment in one of the other chapters that Mr. Maxey doesn’t give a shit about worldbuilding? I’d consider that an ad hominem argument as well, implying that he is careless and lazy. So playing the victim card can’t really work for you, lccorp2.
I have more to say, but unfortunately I have to leave for school in 20 minutes and I’m not ready.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 09:20 said:
(Phew) Now that Jerk’s gone, hopefully we’ll be able to wrangle something constructive out of this whole mess.
First off, I’d like to apologise to Sly and the rest of the forum-goers. Jerk tried to bait me, succeeded, and lured me into a screaming match. After having some time and a Chemical Engineering Principles paper to think over it, I do think that part of the problem, if Jerk’s posts and critique of other peoples’ writing are anything to go by, is that he or she’s very oriented towards literary fiction (style, psychological depth and character), rather than genre fiction, which we mostly discuss on this site (Narrative and plot). I read his or her critique of my chapter, noted the points he or she made were more about style, looked at the sample of what he or she defined as good humour and decided that it wasn’t my cup of tea; that while I’m far from his level, I’m aiming for Terry Pratchett instead of that.
The thing is, you can’t judge genre fiction by literary fiction standards, since they’re very different beasts. That’s possibly why he or she kept on reiterating that our concerns were of no consequence.
I promised Sly a few days ago that I was going to try and be more cool and objective while doing these analyses, and unfortunately, it came while this was halfway written and hence the first half of it is a bit snarky, as well as the noticeable shift from “Evil King” to “Albekizan”. Still, I suppose I will slip from time to time, and I apologize in advance.
Without further ado, let’s try to get some sort of discussion underway. I’ll address Mr. Maxey’s, as well, as the other posters’ points in another post.
Mr. Maxey, if you’re happening to read this, I would be much obliged if you’d care to join in the discussion and enlighten us all on the points discussed. Maybe with a better understanding of what your thought processes were when you happened to write this novel, I won’t have to thin my lips so often while going through the prose.
To everyone else, feel free to join in the discussion, but don’t try to bait me, or anyone else for that matter. It’ll all end in tears.
We’ll be discussing the problems highlighted in the chapter, and some thinking points. I’ll probably be making this a feature of each chapter’s go-through.
I’ll kick-start this little discussion with a few questions. Judging by what I’ve gone through so far:
—Irregardless of what really happened during Vendevorex’s initial escape (I’ve just read through the passage again, and yes, while Zanzeroth does throw his knife to one side, there’s nothing against the possible interpretation that the tornado Vendevorex created killed the guards, and no suggestion that they hacked themselves to bits. I’ll post the passage in its entirety later), he clearly inflicts unnecessary cruel and unusual pain and suffering upon the skyguard near the end of the chapter. Hypocrisy aside, how do you think this might reconcile with the paradigm of a character who is supposed to be likable, empathic, and has clearly stated he abhors the needless waste of life?
—What do you think Mr. Maxey was going for when he chose post-apocalyptic Earth as his setting? Why not another earthlike planet, or another dimension? Or really far into the future, at a general technology level higher than what we have today?
—What do you think about Blasphet’s name? Is the meaning of the name obvious to you? What reaction did you have to Blasphet’s name and moniker upon learning them, and how do you think they coloured your initial impressions of the character?
—Jandra’s escape was greatly aided through the incompetence of the guards assigned to her, who let her out of their sight, unchained her and disobeyed Albekizan’s direct orders to kill her. How do you think the situation might have changed had Vendevorex been, say, required to save her from the courtyard in front of the humans in terms of a) plot, b) characterisation of Vendevorex and Jandra and c) mood of the scene? Do you think it would have been more dangerous and exciting?
I think this should be enough.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 09:30 said:
Oh, and if you can get your hands on a copy of the book, that would help too.
Marie on 27 April 2009, 11:44 said:
I don’t have a chance of getting a copy of the book, which is unfortunate, but post-apocalyptic worlds I think are popular often because the world just seems so dangerous today, and what if we weren’t here? Or if we were different and/or forgotten? I don’t want to go to far with this because I don’t really feel I have enough textual evidence to work with, but in choosing a post-apocalyptic world an author can draw on tropes from today, and how they’re viewed, and then compare them to how the future world will see them—especially when the world has been fundamentally changed, and the reader can’t count on a progressive/coherent shift in thought, as in a “merely” future story. Does that make sense? For instance the mention of Christianity=Bad earlier (the Prologue maybe?) could be an exploration of whether Christianity “went bad” after the apocalypse, or maybe it just entirely disappeared directly afterward, and was just reconstructed later. (I do call myself a Christian, so while I don’t like the trend of Christanity=Evil, but I can see some interesting possibilities to how this opinion may have come about.)
[As an end note, I’d like to apologize to Mr. Maxey and lccorp2 for being so bad at making my point here and hijacking the thread :( I especially didn’t mean to imply that genre fiction is somehow not worth reading—I love reading. Everything. Including genre fiction, and I see no reason to distinguish between genre and literary fiction. It isn’t possible to determine how a book will be read in the future, you’re right. What I should have said, and unfortunately didn’t, was that a book should be judged on its quality rather than its sales numbers. Again, I’m sorry. I hope I can continue in the conversation, but I’ll try to stay out.]
james brown on 27 April 2009, 11:58 said:
@Marie: James Maxey stated in previous post that anyone who desires a digital copy should email him. Check the 22nd comment for more details.
James Maxey on 27 April 2009, 13:07 said:
“Little apparent understanding of science, geography or philosophy? Who has time to research? And why call it fantasy if it has to make sense?”
Properpina, you’re speaking in a broad sense without directly naming me, so I don’t know if if you mean to target your remarks directly at me or not. However, one reason I appreciate Llcorp’s sporking is that he’s unquestionably read the book before concluding I didn’t understand science, geography, or philosophy. I don’t get the sense you have; I think you’re basing this conclusion on having only read the criticism.
I guess I take some slight offense at your notion that I haven’t done my homework. As noted, in several of the points Llcorp has made regarding my flawed biology, he’s been flat out wrong, and I had the actual creatures to prove it. It would have been really simple to just stick in hexapod dragons, since that would conform to reader expectations, but I’d read enough Stephen Jay Gould to know that, if dragons were plausibly sewn together from Earth’s DNA toolkit, they were stuck with four limbs. Also, breathing fire is right out, but I did try to tip my hat toward fire breathing with the wispy feathers around thier snout that resemble smoke. I’ve stuck with the science as I understood it, with the caveat that I’m not Stephen Jay Gould. There’s stuff here I’m sure I got wrong, but I did a ton of research beforehand to try to get it right.
As for geography, I’ve pointed out that my description of the geography around Richmond is accurate, since I used to live there, and the description of the larger kingdom is also accurate, albeit in broad terms.
As for philosophy… I’m not sure what I’ve gotten philosophically wrong here. I believe I can point to just about any philosophy you find in the book and point out its real-life parallel. Even the greatly maligned philosophy behind the sun-dragon’s rituals for selecting their next king is based on a real-life model: Prides of lions drive out their young adult males. Later, when the males in a pride are growing old, young males return and kick out the old ones. Admittedly, it’s usually males from other prides replacing them, but what the hell. I took a stab at creating a nifty, biologically plausible rite of seccession for creatures that worshipped natural selection. Llcorp didn’t find it plausible. There’s been scores of reviews of the book, and no one else has mentioned the ritual as a pro-or-con reason for liking the book. I’m assuming it works sufficiently for most readers to keep reading.
One more thing I’d like to address: “And every author claims that because they “aren’t trying to write Shakespeare” they don’t have to try harder.”
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m arguing that you don’t have to try hard to improve your writing, and keep at it for as long as you write. I started my first novel when I was 25. I am now 45. I’ve written seven or eight novels (the count is fuzzy, since one book was written, then tossed out and rewritten, with only one chapter retained). I’ve lost count of how many short stories I’ve finished. The count was 50 back in 1998. Today it’s probably closer to 70, but I’ve reached a point where any time I try to write down a list I can’t remember all the stories that used to be on my list of 50, a list kept in a spiral notebook long since vanished.
I’ve paid twice for professional advice. I attended Odyssey Fantasy Writer’s Workshop in 1998, and Orson Scott Card’s Writer’s Boot Camp in 2001. I spent close to ten years as a member of the Writer’s Group of the Triad, attending two critique sessions a month. I’ve read hundreds of unpublished stories and novels of other would be writers, and listened attentively as they offered their opinions of my work. When the internet rolled around, I spent many years doing critiques online. Before I ever sold a word at a professional rate, I wrote at least 300,000 words of fiction. Today, I’m closing in on a million. I wish I were more prolific—Harry Turtledove can produce 400k words a year. The most I’ve ever pulled off has been 180k.
The notion that I haven’t tried to make my work better in the course of twenty years is bewildering. Llcorp thinks I’m a bad writer. I would argue that, since I’m not self-published, and people pay me for the things I write, I’m passing some sort of minimum threshhold of goodness. There are several things Llcorp doesn’t like that truly do come down to matters of taste. There are other things where he’s embraced certain myths about what constitutes good writing that simply aren’t true, or have some sliver of truth to them, but, as Sherwood Anderson wrote in Winesburg, Ohio, if you hold onto any truth too tightly, it becomes a lie.
Infodumping, for instance. Llcorp dislikes that I start a lot of my chapters with a couple of pages of description. He much prefers that all information gets woven subtlely into the narrative. “Never infodump” is a pretty good rule. It’s also utterly disconnected from the truth of what gets published and read.
I used to avoid infodumping, since it was one of those “rules” of writing that I was always struggling with, like avoiding “saidbookisms” or never breaking POV. It would drive me bonkers, because I’d repeatedly hear the advice to avoid infodumps, but then I’d pick up a bestselling book like Jurassic Park, and it would be infodumping from beginning to end. The infodump to action in that book has to be really close to the 50/50 range. Yet, people liked it. I even liked it, despite the fact that it completely mistated chaos theory and abused paleontology and genetics. Why did the story work despite its flaws?
At Odyssey, one of the things that Harlan Ellison ripped me apart on was that I was trying to write over people’s heads. I was working so hard to be subtle that reader’s just weren’t following me. I’d try to fill in the readers with clues through the manuscript as to where they were, what the back story was, who the characters were, etc. Some people at odyssey got me. I turned in a story in a future world very similar to Bitterwood and two people raved about it. The other 17 people scratched their heads and didn’t get it, or got it in degrees, but missed some vital point.
I eventually decided that being understood trumped being clever. I started front-loading my stories with rather direct lumps of information describing my settings and characters, and something wierd happened: I started selling almost everything I wrote.
Here’s the reasons infodumps aren’t evil: People will keep reading your story as long as they understand your story. Infodumps are somewhat crude tools that can be abused and misused, but if they give an editor the information he needs to understand your story all the way through to the end, the editor can come back to you and say, “You know, I liked this story, but I think you’re kind of heavy-handed here. Can you make it more subtle? If so, I’d like to publish this story.” On the other hand, you can send in your cleverly written story that’s an intricate tapestry of overlapping carefully woven threads of information and wind up with nothing but a form rejection. All the information the editor needs is there, but he missed something important because he read it at a slush party where he and his crew are sitting around a table with a stack of manuscripts two feet tall. He hit some point five or six pages into your story where he just felt lost, so he put the story down and picked up the next manuscript. It may be that, if he’d found your story in an anthology that he was reading at his leisure for the sheer pleasure of it, he would have recognized it as a work of staggering, carefully constructed genius. As a slush gem, however, it faced the fate of most diamonds on earth—it remains buried among all the other dirt.
I’ve read tons of slush over the years. The readers usually are interupting one another frequently to read some particularly awful howler. No one is really concentrating on the work they are reading. They do want to find good stories, but they are even more eager to turn that huge stack sitting on the table into a pile of rejected stories they don’t have to deal with any more.
If you are unknown, I promise you that subtlety isn’t your friend. Infodumps can actually focus the attention of a slush reader. Telling instead of showing can get you handed up to the main editor.
Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s, wrote an editorial last year about the sort of story that catches her attention in the slush. The example she gave happens to be my first sale to her, “To the East, a Bright Star.” This story would be ripped to shreds by Llcorp2, I suspect. For instance, it starts with the line, “There was a shark in the kitchen.” Anyone who knows anything at all about style will recognize you shouldn’t start a story with “there was.” Where’s the action verb? I then have a fairly long paragraph of description of the scene, followed by a few more paragraphs that are just telling what the main character is doing at the moment. I’m just describing a guy moving around in a flooded house. There’s no dialogue. I’m dropping hints that some big catastrophe has happened. A few pages later, I just stop hinting and tell the readers what’s happened in a couple of paragraphs of memory that the POV character really has no reason to reflect on at the moment. It was just time to get the information out there. Towards the end of the story, I have a fairly long monologue where the POV character essentially pauses in the middle of the action to tell his life story. It is, in real-life, a completely innapropriate moment for the character to decide to explain who he is and why he’s done what he’s done. He’s not really speaking to the other character present—he’s talking to the reader, telling the sequence of events that have brought him to this precise moment in time, with the rather curious set of values and attitudes he’s displayed he’s displayed so far. It’s naked telling instead of showing. And I didn’t choose this approach carelessly. I was just frustrated that reader’s kept missing stuff in my stories, and thought I’d try my hand at just telling readers directly what I was wanting them to know.
Subtle, it wasn’t. Understood, it was. And thus, it was published. It generated fan mail. People discussed the message of the story in the Asimov’s forums. Reviews of the issue always singled out the story as particularly thought-provoking. The story’s since been reprinted, so I’ve suckered not just one editor with my clumsy infodumps and telling, but two. And I’d do it again! Bwahahahahah!
If you haven’t been published, you really have no clue what the various aspects of writing are that will constitute a good story in the eyes of editors. If you did, you’d be published. But, here’s another truth: If you have been published, you still will have no clue what will constitute a good story in the eyes of most editors. I can sell to Sheila Williams and Edmund Schubert, but can’t make a dent in Gordon van Gelder or Ellen Datlow. I’ve now found and agent and at least two editors who’ve liked my novels, but I’ve had plenty more who haven’t. You really will go crazy if you try to write based on what you think other people are going to buy. And you really will produce stories that very few people can read if you try to follow all the “rules” of good writing.
I will repeat what I said in an earlier thread: Just write what you love to write. Use whatever tricks or techniques you have to in order to get your story read from beginning to end. For me, my writing didn’t come to life until I gained the confidence to break the “rules” whenever it felt right.
What I meant about not being able to get into print by analysis is that, in my earliest writing at least, I felt like there were a lot of rules of good story telling. If I ever wrote a story that adhered to all these rules, editors would recognize it as a good story and I’d be a writer. I read all the books on POV and plot construction, I learned all the elements that a sympathetic protagonist is supposed to possess, and I could pontificate on what made a good hook, and what utterly failed as an opening. I did all this for years, without publishing a word.
Everyone will follow a different path to publication. For me, I didn’t make the transition from slush-pile resident to published author until I actively decided to stop trying to impress people with my writing, and just got on with telling the stories as directly as possible. I never impressed anyone when I was trying to sell my words. I’ve managed to win over quite a few editors and readers when I just try to tell my stories.
Even though Llcorp has disliked my novel, I so far get the sense that he’s managed to understand it, mostly. The most stinging critique any writer can recieve is, “I just didn’t feel like I understood the story, so I stopped reading.” He kept reading, and now he’s rereading. He’s understood the story to a deep enough degree that he’s able to point out the distinct moments in the story he didn’t like. He sees what I’m trying to do clearly enough to tell me I’m doing it in a way he finds unsatisfying. I have completed my duty to my story, and written in a fashion that he can understand. His critique is really sort of a strange little tribute to the things I did right.
falconempress on 27 April 2009, 13:20 said:
Hello! I decided to procrastinate a bit and take some time off while studying for my business law final to take a peek at this and:
THANK YOU. thank you so much for pointing out the mistakes in governing/administration. What irks me to no end is ye olde generic incompetent administrator/pencil pusher, which most fantasy Evil™ governments, or more common, non-governments, suffer from. And nowhere is the need for skilled and intelligent people in government offices greater than in authoritarial political systems.
Why? Simple. Authoritarian systems are in their very natures very limiting to the citizens and strive to control each and every aspect of their lives (these issues are discussed in greater detail in my essay “On Tyranny” here on II). They want to control not only what people do but also what they believe and what they think. One of the most important tools to achieve this is propaganda. Who does not abide the rules of the regime, will be mercilessly prosecuted, as will be all those others who help/come in contact with him, since the system does not want anybody to challenge it. And how do you think this all can be achieved if you have worthless, incompetent people working for you? Very often more power rests in the hands of the beaurocrats who are responsible for carrying out the decisions/actions of the ruling élite than the élite itself. A system does not work if it does not have competent people to maintain it.
Also, regardless of what authoritarian or totalitarian system we are talking about, when it comes to traitors or enemies of the state, they are always executed in a particularly public manner, they are in the headlines of newspapers, these executions get extensice coverage in all media. The main reason is to intimidate those who may ponder taking a similar course of action and to show the omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience of the system. The message is – “No matter who you are or where you hid, if you try to go against us, we will find you and we will make you pay.” So I think that for this reason maybe Jandras execution (no matter how certain her escape seemed from the start) to be held out in public for everyone to see how the traitors will be dealt with. Also, the fact that she is a human who was raised by a dragon and had been tolerated by dragons for so long, educated even, would make her execution even more shocking in the eyes of the other people who are scheduled for genocide. A little foreshadowing of what is to come. So if Albekizan is really supposed to be this ruthless Evil™ ruler he could act like one.
Screamingfangirl on 27 April 2009, 13:32 said:
I’ve been staying out of these, mostly because I highly dislike dragon books, but I have time until my next class so I thought I’d try answering some of lccorp’s questions.
-I think the problem with changing the setting of the story to another earth-like planet or dimension would be a loss of reader familiarity. I can’t speak for other people, of course, but I prefer to read a book where I am at least a little familiar with the setting. If the characters eat lunch, for instance, it’s easier for me to see them eating bread and cheese than weird alien goo. I can put myself in their situation more easily. If they’re traveling on horseback, I know about how fast they’ll move, what kind of sores they’ll get after riding too long, and how often they’ll have to stop and rest. I don’t ride horses (except on occasion), but I know what they are and I’ve been around them. I can’t guess how fast a flying pink furry bird-thing would go, and even if you told me it wouldn’t feel as familiar. Fantasy authors have the license to create alternate land forms and still keep all the lovely familiar earth-things, because the reader is focusing on the story and not the science. I once read a fantasy-like story set on an alien planet with alien races, and it was good but a lot harder to get into. And since Bitterwood seems to be sci-fi/fantasy, I think a post-apocalyptic earth is a perfectly reasonable way to keep familiarity while still keeping a little “science-fiction” sort of feel. So I don’t at all have a problem with that part of the story.
-I actually didn’t get any vibes from Blasphet. It sounds kind of like an Egyptian goddess to me, maybe. I think you’re being a little harsh concerning Evil Names here-we don’t want our antagonists to have wimpy or even average-sounding names, do we? For instance, Voldemort means “flight of death” in French. Now, Rowling says she made the name up, but even so, it has implications. Anyone who has been exposed to French (or English words that come from French, like mortician or mortify) will probably have a negative reaction to the name. Imagine if his name had been “Bob”. Not quite as scary, is it? However, the meaning could probably have been hidden better.
I have to study before class, but I’ll try to get to your other questions later. I apologize if I misunderstood any of your questions or your critique.
Finally, my own person opinion about books on the bestseller list. I own a book about writing in which the author asks you if you’d rather write a book beloved by millions or one that you and five others agree is a masterpiece. I don’t like Twilight, but it’s something of an accomplishment to stay of the top of the bestseller list that long, and I feel that it’s petty to disregard that accomplishment. Because, really, I would give my left arm (probably) to have people create fan sites about my books, and make fanart and write fanfiction about my characters. And even though I didn’t like Twilight, I finished it quickly because I found it fun and easy to read. I had to literally force myself to finish Great Expectations and even Pride and Prejudice (though I did like Wuthering Heights). A fun, easy read with characters that make my readers want to write fanfiction is what I want to write (though without the sparkles, hopefully).
I’m sorry for possibly being offending, but this subject is my favorite rant ^^.
Marie on 27 April 2009, 13:47 said:
They aren’t mutually exclusive. Some classics are actually fun to read—although I loved Pride and Prejudice and wasn’t a fan of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre :D Although frankly, Malory’s Le Mort de Arthur read like a Middle Ages fanfiction to me!
James Maxey on 27 April 2009, 13:55 said:
No further time to reply, but if anyone is interested in the thought process that went into designing my dragons, here’s a link to an essay I wrote called “Building a better dragon.” http://bitterwoodnovel.blogspot.com/2007/06/building-better-dragon.html
It tells what my cultural and scientific reasoning was, and why I found the idea cool in the first place.
I also will say that the simple reason Jandra isn’t killed by the guards is that the order just hasn’t reached them yet. It’s not like Albekizan has a cell phone. Ven flies from the previous scene into this scene to rescue her. With the scenes back to back, I think most people get that only minutes have passed from Ven’s escape to the time he appears on the tower.
Relayer on 27 April 2009, 15:20 said:
I have to say it’s pretty cool that there’s an actual professional author here talking about writing instead of a bunch of teenagers who think they’re the shit and actually don’t know anything and will never be published.
Juniper on 27 April 2009, 15:23 said:
This.
OverlordDan on 27 April 2009, 15:41 said:
The line “There was a shark in the kitchen” makes me giggle. Like its from some odd couple sitcom.
Anyways, I liked your article on building a better dragon, Mr. Maxey, although I may never again be able to invision your dragon’s again without the faint sound of clucking echoing through my mind :P
I’m also glad that the most bitter of retorts come not from you, but from other people from this site. Really says something about your character.
On that note, Relayer, you seem to be a bit negative lately. Any way you could tone it down a bit? My favorite part of this site is the fact that people would remain civil in their arguments (no matter how long they became :P).
Normally I filter out the negativity by reading the comments with the voice of Morgan Freeman in my head, but you seem to be attacking everyone, and thats a bit rude (if you don’t explain why you disagree).
Well, I’ve written more than I care to, so, um, thanks for putting up with me! :)
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 18:19 said:
Relayer, if you’re not going to contribute constructively to the discussion and just flame-bait, please leave. This caveat goes for anyone else not interested in discussion. I’m trying hard to be civil and non-aggressive here, and if you’re going to ruin things I’m not interested in having the likes of you in this discussion.
Now, let’s get on with the discussion. First, sir, thank you for taking the time from your work to come and speak with us. I’m not going to force you to answer the discussion questions, but I do think it would help understanding and the discussion if you did shed some light on these issues. That aside, I’d like to clarify a few points:
If you wish to consider the financial success of books to be the determinant of their worth, your Dragon Age books are indeed rather successful. The fact that I’m holding a hard copy right now proves that this novel series has crossed the Pacific and is in South-East Asia, and the national library board has a number of copies of both currently-out books in the series around my locale, so I’ll be able to get my grubby hands on a copy of Dragonforce with ease if need be. Unfortunately, I’m planning to do Dragon Strike by E. E. Knight after this, and it’s a rather mixed book. (By the way, have you read him? David Valentine of his Vampire Earth series reminds me of Bitterwood himself, only with the dragons replaced with vampires.)
You’ve tapped into an overlooked niche market, that’s for sure; in between starting this particular “episode” and the moment I’m writing this, I’ve consulted a number of…internet acquaintances and they know of this series, due to the fact that they’re what the internet knows as “furries” (and the associated stigma) and there’s been a distinct lack of anthropomorphic animal fiction in mainstream speculative fiction since Redwall. Perhaps there’s a stigma against them or something; I only have anecdotal experience to go on.
So yes, when viewed from that angle, Bitterwood is a good book, no questions asked. It’s sold, you’ve said it’s earned out its advance, and it’s got good distribution for a medium-sized publishing house such as Solaris, as opposed to one of the giant imprints such as Ace or Daw, some of which books I can’t find in major bookstores such as the local chapters of Borders. The thing is, I’m not looking at it from that angle, or from the angle of eventually getting it on the acquisitions editor’s desk and going through with the final sale and the check in your hand, with hopefully more to come. These comments are judging the book based on the perceived characterisation, the consistency of the internal logic, so on and so forth. People are free to disagree with me on whether they are valid indicators of the quality of a book, as a certain someone has attempted to do through rather vitriolic means, but this is the basis I’m going by.
Yes, I completely agree that the “rules” are flexible and can be transcended, circumstances permitting. However, in the instances I’ve pointed out, I didn’t think the circumstances permitted as such, and explained why I thought so. Is it possible to create, for example, a bloodthirsty, yet somewhat sympathetic character? Hannibal Lecter proves it’s quite possible; RuGaard from E. E. Knight’s Dragon Outcast, which I went through, proves it’s completely possible to have an utterly misanthropic, Hitler-ish character that rants about the superiority of the draconic species and yet still appear sympathetic, and I tried to find out why. Oddly enough, both Albekizan’s and Vendevorex’s actions in chapter four turn me off, and it’s got to do with the execution of the characters, I think (although I won‘t go in-depth into this now, especially dragging in another novel into the fray). I’m not sure what you’ll say to this, sir, but I think it’s important to understand why the “rules” are there and the purpose they serve before going on to move beyond them. Perhaps I can’t find love, truth and beauty in Bitterwood the way my “furry” acquaintances do, but I don’t think it precludes me from trying to discover why it doesn’t hold the same values for me the way it does for them, and telling other people about why I think this way.
But I will agree with you that infodumping has its place; in an earlier article I did for this site, I pointed out that infodumping isn’t all bad—it has its virtues in clarity, directness and attention-gathering. Maybe it’s my personal taste, as you put it, or the way I read, but when I came across, say, the description of Albekizan’s palace, I took one glance, hopped over it and went straight to the action, which apparently is contrary to what was intended.
With regards to the geography about Richmond, I will apologise for the tone I used to convey the message, but I will not apologise for having those thoughts when I read the concerning paragraph:
I’m not sure whether it’s more a problem of my interpretation, or of the prose getting the point across, but the mental image conjured when I read this paragraph was of a rectangular box with the four geographical formations hemming it in, and I had the appropriate reaction, since I didn’t have the benefit of knowing the land on which this was based and only have got the prose to go on. I think it’s a similar problem with Vendevorex and his initial escape; I’ll post the passage here in full:
Again, the interpretation here is more tilted towards Vendevorex having actively killed and injured the guards using his “spell” while escaping (and Zanzeroth hitting him in the process), rather than the guards having inflicted the injuries on themselves, for which I’m not really seeing any evidence for. Could you please correct me?
I’ve already conceded the points on live birth and to a slightly lesser extent, those on the flying weights of the dragons, since there’s a theory out there that the oxygen-rich environments of that time period in prehistory might have helped sustain the flight of such creatures. I’ll go look up that blog post later on, though. That aside, I’m quite sure of the invisibility bit; it’s lifted almost directly from my lecture notes. If I may ask a question, sir, was there any particular aim you had in mind when you continually reminded the reader through explanations such as on the invisible dust that Bitterwood was sci-fi?
I think I’ll wrap it up here for now and address any other points that I didn’t address later on. I may need reminding; it’s hard to keep track of everything when you’re playing devil’s advocate—well, not quite the term, but close enough.
Again, a very big thank-you for coming here and putting up with us all, especially me.
Juniper on 27 April 2009, 18:20 said:
I don’t like these dissections of Mr Maxey’s work. I know I’m in the minority and I’m not saying he’s a great writer. I just don’t think these “shreddings” add any value to this site.
On the other side of that coin, I would like to add that I really liked the “Description without Describing” (or something like that) article that Iccorp2 did. More of that stuff, please?
/two cents
AnotherAnon on 27 April 2009, 18:34 said:
I respect Mr. Maxey greatly for his discussion and his courtesy. However, I see no reason for lccorp2 to immediately stop his/her sporkings because a defendant has shown up. I hope that, in a debate or discussion, we don’t always capitulate and abandon our opinions simply because someone has offered an opposing argument. That gives a poor impression of our own beliefs, and blocks any further discussion.
I don’t believe lccorp2’s sporkings were ever intended as attacks on Mr. Maxey, but rather against the violation of his/her principles as a reader. This retrostyling of them as vitriol is rather strange.
lccorp2 on 27 April 2009, 18:40 said:
(Shrug) By their reasoning, I personally hate E. E. Knight. And Anne/Todd McCaffrey. And Donita K. Paul. And Janine Cross. And Alan F. Troop. And Richard Knaak. I certainly have a lot of business personally hating people I’ve never met before.
Juniper on 27 April 2009, 19:16 said:
I certainly hope you weren’t projecting this reasoning on me.
swenson on 27 April 2009, 19:27 said:
Meh, if you want to be Tolkien, well, you’re out of luck. Everyone agrees that LotR is a fantastic book, but Maxey’s right- it didn’t exactly sell quickly. It took him over ten years to find a publisher! Besides, to be a Tolkien, you have to have mad skillz, and very, very few people have those skills. If, on the other hand, you want to be a writer… then you probably do have to write like Maxey said.
Marisu on 27 April 2009, 19:35 said:
“I don’t like these dissections of Mr Maxey’s work. I know I’m in the minority and I’m not saying he’s a great writer. I just don’t think these “shreddings” add any value to this site.”
Then what about the “shreddings” of Inhertitance and Twilight? Believe it or not, the old Anti-Shurtugal stuff before it got all “politically correct” helped me quite a bit with how I go about character development, world building, etc. Perhaps these articles are more sporkish than editorial, but between the snarkiness I think there are points to consider.
Without those “rip Eragon to shreds” sessions on the old AS, I would have probably finished yet another story about mary sues with no real depth. (No, I’m not saying Bitterwood falls into this category). It was the humor and snarkiness that drew me into the “anti” movement and made me reconsider the merit of Eragon, which I used to think was the greatest thing since Tolkien.
Legion on 27 April 2009, 19:54 said:
Thank you, Marisu. I was waiting and hoping that someone would bring up this point. Just because the author of the work being criticized is present, why would it be “inappropriate” now to rip the book apart? If Paolini or Meyers showed up here, would there also be baawing of “OMG YOU’RE BEING TOO HARSH TOWARDS THEM”? I think not.
While I don’t disagree that there’s a line between bashing and criticising, lccorp2 has taken out the “bash” elements from this article (ie: the failscore) to reciprocate for the courtesy Maxey has shown. Additionally, there are also plenty of articles here that cross the line into bashing far more than these Bitterwood reviews but I haven’t seen anyone calling those out.
So let’s be fair here, and quit it with the double standards.
Juniper on 27 April 2009, 21:14 said:
The difference between shredding Bitterwood and shredding Twilight and Inheritance is that the last two are best sellers and promoted by many bigwigs as examples of excellence. They are winning prizes. They are being made into movies. They are on childrens’ lit lists and pushed in schools by teachers. They are promoted as classics, both in story and skill by people who should know better. They are praised critics and reviewers that I would expect better from. They are eagerly consumed by the masses.
Criticizing Twilight and Inheritance is different because they have masses of readers and otherwise intelligent book reviewers standing before them, defending them and pushing them upon the populace. I had never heard of Bitterwood before these articles appeared and I’ve not seen it being promoted as a classic by anyone, anywhere. It has 18 reviews on Amazon and there is only one review that appears to be by a professional reviewer.
Call it a preference of taste, but I prefer to reserve the “shredding” for writers who have undeservedly received a world-side status of being excellent, skilled and amazing.
This isn’t a hill I’ll die on. I will simply avoid these articles in the future if it is decided that they stay.
Relayer on 27 April 2009, 21:25 said:
Me too
Juniper on 27 April 2009, 21:30 said:
I would like to clarify: since I am obviously in the minority on this issue, I will not pursue it any further. Just giving feedback, excercizing my free speech while I still have it, and all that. Thanks for reading.
Legion on 27 April 2009, 21:47 said:
::shrugs::
I still don’t see anyone calling out any of the other “non-bestselling book” sporks here as undeserving of the criticism we’ve levied against them for the reason you state above.
Anyways, Sly might disagree, but I never got the impression that II uses a set of criteria to pick and choose which books deserve to get ripped apart here and which books don’t.
Anyone who wants to contribute an opinion on a book, well known or obscure, to the site has always been free to submit an article. Although we purposely stay away from pulling stuff off fanfiction.net or fictionpress.com (alot of which is considerably more god awful than Inheritance and Twilight combined), anything published and being sold for money has always been fair game.
HOWEVER, I can’t deny your point about alienating visitors here if we continue to be completely indiscriminate in targeting books. I won’t guarantee that anything is going to change, but I’ll bring up this issue to Sly. Thanks. =]
James Maxey on 28 April 2009, 01:55 said:
Specifically to answer some of LL’s questions:
As to the evidence that Vendevorex didn’t kill any guards, I offer these lines: “A weighted net was thrown over the black vortex, the wind of its passing causing the miniature tornado to collapse into an expanding cloud. One by one the earth-dragons lunged, tackling the cloud of ash.”
Even if the cloud was toxic, Ven didn’t sic it on anyone. The guards leapt into the cloud, attempting to tackle something that wasn’t there. In the confusion within the cloud, they hit each other. Zanzeroth is the POV character in the scene—he’s plainly aware that the image of Vendevorex in the room is merely an illusion, since when Ven is arguing with Albekizan, I write: “Vendevorex closed his eyes, shook his head, and took a deep breath… a breath that to Zanzeroth’s ears came from well behind the place where the wizard stood.” This is reinforced with Zanzeroth attacks a different spot than the earth-dragons. I suppose I could have added some line by Zanzeroth to the effect of, “the fools have only injured themselves,” but this is one of those times when I figured I’d leave it to readers to extrapolate what likely happened.
Okay, on to your discussion questions: (This is really cool, by the way. It’s like I’m back in college, getting a pop quiz on a book I actually happen to have read! Sweet!)
Ven clearly inflicts unnecessary cruel and unusual pain and suffering upon the skyguard near the end of the chapter. Hypocrisy aside, how do you think this might reconcile with the paradigm of a character who is supposed to be likable, empathic, and has clearly stated he abhors the needless waste of life?
Ven’s top priority through the book is to protect Jandra. His rough treatment of the aerial guard is his way of trying to ensure that, even if guards are sent after them, none are going to be eager to actually find him. He does try a non-violent escape as his first option, by turning invisible. When he’s finally forced into violence, he’s quick, effective, and cold about it. While I find Vendevorex likable, there’s no denying that this coldness is a fundamental element of his nature. He doesn’t talk about his feelings. He doesn’t tell Jandra that he loves her, for instance, in the scenes where it would matter the most. Indeed, in later chapters he makes it clear that he is completely lost when it comes to navigating Jandra’s emotional landscape. Ven isn’t thinking of the guard’s feelings when he cripples him. He’s making a rather chill calculation that hurting this one guard will save him a lot of effort further down the line.
What do you think Mr. Maxey was going for when he chose post-apocalyptic Earth as his setting? Why not another earthlike planet, or another dimension? Or really far into the future, at a general technology level higher than what we have today?
This is an easy one. As previously stated, I’m an atheist. Back when I wrote this book, I was on the far edge of a curve where I didn’t even like the magical elements in fantasy novels. It seemed like something was hardwired into human nature that views magic as superior to science. Really, in all the seasons of X-Files, did the mysterious occurances ever prove to have some rational, non-fantastical explanation behind them? Also, we are surrounded by things that would appear magical to people in other times, and we barely notice them. Doors open on their own in shopping centers as we walk toward them. We can be transported through the air hundreds of miles in the span of hours. I can stare into my scrying device and watch people half a world away killing each other. Who needs crystal balls, magic carpets, and genies?
So, I decided to construct a fantasy universe that was, in fact, our own world, with creatures and “magic items” that didn’t violate any scientific laws. At the time, I didn’t see the point in just creating worlds out of thin air for the hell of it. My tastes have changed in the intervening years, however, and now I actually have a lot of fun writing stories with supernatural elements without feeling like I’m betraying my fellow atheists by promoting magical realities as superior to, you know, real reality.
As far as how far in the future I set this, 1099 years was a gut level choice. It was far enough in the future for my backstory (which gets revealed little by little over the course of the three books) to have plausibly unfolded, but not so far out that there wouldn’t be some hints of the previous human civilization still hanging on. As for the technology level, I think that the technology 1100 years from now will strike us as indistinguishable from magic.
You find the invisibility powder implausible. I confess, I have no technological data to point you to in order to justify it. But, really, didn’t you at least grin a little when you learned the specific name of the technology in chapter eighteen? And, not to fall to heavily onto the “everyone does it” defense, but I’ve read, like, ten zillion science fiction stories that contain cloaking devices, invisibility suits, magnetic lenses, or whatever. Hell, one of the foundational stories of SF is the Invisible Man. I don’t regard time machines or faster than light travel or handheld disintigrating lasers as plausible under our current understandings of physics, but there are some things in science fiction, especially adventure SF, that are so ingrained in the genre that it almost doesn’t feel like SF if you don’t include them.
For anyone who hasn’t read the book, I describe my invisibility tech as a type of silver powder that is actually billions of dust mote sized “optical reversers” that float on the surface of a magnetic field. These tiny machines catch the photons hitting one side of the field, absorb them, then signal the machines on the opposite side of the field to emit duplicate photons that project an image of what’s behind the object being cloaked. The effect works in a sphere centered around the control device, the helmets that Vendevorex and Jandra wear. The light-emitting nanites can also be used to create illusions, which is how Ven appears to be talking to the king while he’s actually invisible a couple of yards behind his image.
I’m not claiming the technology is viable enough that I can run down to the patent office and register the idea, but I also don’t think that most readers spent all that much time pondering it. It’s magic dust when it first appears. Magic dust is a longstanding literary device in fantasy. I just tried to imagine a way to make magic dust have at least some minimal grounding as a possible technology.
What do you think about Blasphet’s name? Is the meaning of the name obvious to you? What reaction did you have to Blasphet’s name and moniker upon learning them, and how do you think they coloured your initial impressions of the character?
Blasphet’s name is a blend of the word blasphemy and the pagan god of the Knight’s Templar, Baphomet. Since he’s also known as “the Murder God,” I figure readers expect that he might be a bad guy. And, unlike Albekizan, Blasphet is plainly aware he’s the bad guy in this book, or in any book. He’s Dr. Evil with feathers. Blasphet is my ultimate tribute to the comic book supervillians who rub their hands gleefully as they cackle over their evil schemes. He’s one of my favorite characters to write, since he’s just so far out there it’s fun to figure out what his next casual act of wickedness will be. He’s shown tending a garden full of poison ivy that he waters with human blood, for heaven’s sake. The boy ain’t right.
Jandra’s escape was greatly aided through the incompetence of the guards assigned to her, who let her out of their sight, unchained her and disobeyed Albekizan’s direct orders to kill her. How do you think the situation might have changed had Vendevorex been, say, required to save her from the courtyard in front of the humans in terms of a) plot, b) characterisation of Vendevorex and Jandra and c) mood of the scene? Do you think it would have been more dangerous and exciting?
Plainly, the sequence of events didn’t work for you, but I tried to give certain clues that the Jandra scene and the Vendevorex scene are unfolding simultaneously. In the Vendevorex scene, Albekizan tells Ven that Jandra has been arrested. The scene ends with Albekizan ordering Bandar to go have Jandra killed. I immediately start the next scene with Jandra still free, unarrested, then proceed to show her capture by the guards, who toss her into the sealed room where she’s to be kept as a bargaining chip to ensure Vendevorex’s obedience. They don’t disobey Albekizan’s orders to kill her because they never receive them. She survives not due to their incompetence, but because Ven finds Jandra almost immediately, then they flee the palace, have the confrontation with the aerial guard, and then escape invisibly. I feel like the danger and excitement level for the scene is about right.
As to whether or not the rescue scene should have unfolded in the courtyard… almost definitely not. To my mind, Ven is behaving in character in the escape scene. He really isn’t worried about saving the humans in the courtyard. His sole concern is getting Jandra out of danger. Jandra is angry with Vendevorex in chapter nine because of this attitude… she asks him bluntly why he’s not fighting to save other humans, and he tells her, directly, “The humans must fight for themselves.” He explains that there is little he can realistically do to change the lot of humans in the world. If he kills Albekizan, some other dragon will take his place who will hate humans just as much. Ven sees no point in risking his life or Jandra’s in a fight that they ultimately can’t win. And, he knows that Albekizan is fated to fail at his attempted genocide because, even if he did manage to kill all the humans in his kingdom, Ven has travelled enough to know that the population of humans Albekizan can reach is but a small fraction of the humans spread throughout the world. The tension between Jandra, who wants to save other humans, and Ven, who wants only to save Jandra, provides a major part of the conflict of the middle part of the book.
If I’d set the scene in the courtyard, Ven’s decision to look other humans in their eyes then choose not to save them would have been a bit too cold-hearted. If he did save other the other humans, then it would have wrecked the later tension between Jandra and Ven’s competing priorities.
Ven’s story arc is that he’s probably the most powerful character in the book, but due to his backstory (as revealed in the middle chapters) he’s overly cautious about the consequences of using his power. He knows that his most casual actions can have uninticipated consequences for people (or dragons) he never intended to hurt, so he uses his power carefully. He worries standing up to Albekizan is just going to get Jandra killed, and won’t change a thing in the long-run. He’s a bit of a pessimist. The shape of his arc requires him to reach a point where he also understands that not using his powers carries it’s own set of uninticipated consequences, and he’s finally drawn back for his final stand with Albekizan and his minions. Taking that stand prematurely makes no sense; he hasn’t yet learned what he needs to learn to see a solution to the problems Bitterwood has created.
Okay, hope that helps. By the way, LL, if you ever get tired of typing in all the text you need to quote from my book, just drop me a line if you’d like a digital copy.
Marie on 28 April 2009, 03:10 said:
I hardly know enough about physics to make a judgment on your invisibility powder.
I did think this was an interesting contradiction to your stance. While you may be okay with writing magic now, you mentioned that at the time you disliked magic because people generally seemed to prefer superstition to science. It does seem to me that when you have a scientific explanation for something that doesn’t make sense scientifically, it ends up to the same thing (this isn’t really aimed at you, just generally what frustrates me). It can be frustrating for an attentive reader, especially one who knows something about science to see it fundamentally violated for love of Science.
And “Science” in some cases has become a shortcut for the author—it’s Science, I don’t have to explain. It’s like in my Victorian lit class where everyone looked at me like I was nuts because I happened to mention that genetically a first cousin isn’t usually much closer than a stranger. Well, unless it keeps going. And of course it’s much more complicated (isn’t everything?) Then again, this is the same group that thought keeping a curl in hair in a locket was creepy. One girl said she just found the entire idea of hair weirded her out, and all I could think was “you’re not bald! There is hair on your head right now!”
Wait, where was I and what was I talking about? Right. Legitimate science versus Science Explains All and Is Infallible.
Well, I confess I haven’t gotten that far yet so I can’t judge it here (thank you by the way!) but I am a little afraid that the explanation you gave here might even weaken the idea of the powder once I get to it. Because I don’t know the physics behind it, if it doesn’t not ring true I might just pass it by. If it’s that detailed in the text as an explanation then it might be risky, for me. But I haven’t gotten that far, so I can’t exactly judge :D While the idea of powder, the more I think about, does seem very iffy, I’ll reserve judgment.
Does this make sense to anyone else? Am I the only one who thinks of the emergence of “Science: therefore truth” as a fairly new trend (say, a century or so)?
OverlordDan on 28 April 2009, 08:03 said:
I do believe that there has been a swelling of faith in science lately (just look to movies, where “computer hacking” can erase people’s lives), but I think that might just be the logical outgrowth of what technology has become.
Juniper on 28 April 2009, 08:18 said:
I do agree. Back in the age of the Spanish Inquisition it used to be “Holy Catholic Doctrine: therefore truth”. Before that it was “Biggest Stick: Therefore truth”. :)
Anon on 28 April 2009, 11:16 said:
99% of all people you will ever meet can never think for themselves and listen to either men in robes, men in lab coats, or men in business suits for the rest of their lives. The rare 1% who don’t do so blindly actually study science and understand things for themselves before listening to media interpretations of things.
James Maxey on 28 April 2009, 11:23 said:
Because I don’t know the physics behind it, if it doesn’t not ring true I might just pass it by. If it’s that detailed in the text as an explanation then it might be risky, for me.
I never stop to explain it to that level of detail. I’m writing a novel, not a patent application.
Here’s the scene in chapter 4 where I first hint that the magic dust might be something other than magic: (They are flying, chased by aerial guard. Ven can barely fly with Jandra’s additional weight. He only got aloft by jumping off a tower… another reason I didn’t set the escape sequence in the courtyard.)
??“Oh no,” she said. “You’ll never escape carrying me! You… you should save yourself.”
“Don’t even think of letting go,” Vendevorex
said. “Our only chance is invisibility. You’ll need to create the illusion. I’m too taxed at the moment to concentrate.”
“I-I’ll do it,” Jandra said. “I’ve been practicing.”
“Take care. You’ll find that the wind makes the illusion difficult.”
Impossible is more like it, Jandra thought. Vendevorex was good enough to turn invisible inthe wind and even in rain. He could walk and fly invisibly while Jandra could only maintain the effect if she stood still. She could not reveal her doubts to Ven now, however.
Jandra clasped her mentor’s neck more tightly
with her left arm while her right arm reached into the pouch of silvery dust she kept on her belt. The wind snatched most of the dust from her grasp the second she pulled her hand free, carrying it beyond the range of her control. She knitted her brow in concentration, envisioning each individual particle of dust in her palm, feeling it come to life. She released it, and with effort kept enough of the dust close to her to make the light deflection possible.
The tiara on her brow grew warm as she extended the control field, bending the flight of the dust to her will, swirling the motes into a sphere large enough to encompass Vendevorex’s wingspan. Suddenly the sunlight dimmed as the particles began to follow the reflective pattern Vendevorex had taught her.
“Well done,” Vendevorex said, his voice weak. “Maintain control. And please, ever so slightly, relax your arm.”??
I think there’s some non-magical hinting going on here with the language. “Control field,” “reflective pattern,” & “light deflection.” But, I’m hardly infodumping, in the bad sense. Reader’s here know this is SF because LL and I are openly discussing it as SF, but most readers who would pick up the book based on the cover and the back jacket wouldn’t know yet that this is SF instead of fantasy. Instead, every chapter, I’m inserting clues that are helping readers build the case in their own imagination that this is the future of our own world instead of a made-from-scratch fantasy universe.
Based on reader feedback, the earliest people figure it out is chapter 2, with the manhole cover. But most readers I discuss the book with directly don’t figure it out until Hezekiah’s decapitation, still a dozen chapters away. The word “nanotechnology” doesn’t appear until page 354. I really don’t think I’m rubbing the science in my reader’s face.
I think that for me, the key dividing line between science fiction and fantasy is the line between the possible and the impossible. Science fiction can be filled with things that are highly, highly unlikely—Larry Niven’s Ringword, for instance—yet not actually impossible given our understanding of the laws of nature. Almost any alien imagined by a man is going to be so unlikely that the odds are effectively nil; yet, even if the odds are one in a trillion that there are Vulcans out there, it’s still not 100% impossible, so that last sliver of possibility is enough for readers (and me) to get excited about. Life on other planets could be like this! The future could be like this!
Fantasy usually starts with the impossible and builds from there. What if there were a world where people really did have souls, but those souls were external to their bodies, and took on the shape of animals? It plays “what if” games, which is a valid approach to building a fictional world, but the underlying question is, “what if some facet of the reality we live in was different? What if some people are born with the inate power to be a wizard?”
The underlying premise of all fantasy is, “Wouldn’t it be cool if things were different?” The underlying premise of SF is, “Wouldn’t it be cool or interesting if somewhere out there, in either space or time, these things that could be possible finally happen?”
While there are many, many technological hurdles that would have to be overcome for my invisibility dust to work, I don’t see any laws of physics that would specifically rule it out. I’m assuming that 1: Tiny machines are possible. You can think of all the mechanisms in a cell as tiny machines, so it passes that test. 2: You would need a lot of computing power to integrate them so they could behave as a single machine. Given Moore’s Law, the computing power available 1100 years from now should be up to the task. 3: The material would have to be able to both absorb and transmit light. Again, I don’t see any barriers, this is a pretty common attribute of most matter on earth; we can discuss dark matter another time. 4: The materials would have to organize along a magnetic field. This is the biggest technological hurdle for me to imagine. You do have the videos of superconductive material floating above magnets (or vice versa). I actually think that holding a cloud of metalic particles in a confined field isn’t that difficult to imagine. Imagining that it could be done while overcoming a chaotic force like wind does require a bit of a leap of faith. I really think that the vast majority of readers make that leap.
One thing you quickly discover as a writer, however, is that you’re always going to have readers who know more than you do on some subject. There’s a pet pig later in the book who actually goes on to play a role in the next two books. It was an interesting challenge for me as a writer by the third book, to have to integrate a pig with a backstory into the plot. I met someone who raises pigs who told me that they were completely turned off by Poocher, who behaved like no pig she’d ever met, but was, instead, behaving more like a dog. I don’t personally know any pigs. I admit, Poocher does pretty much serve the same function as a dog. He really could have been a dog, as his name indicates, but I decided on a whim that a pig might be more interesting. I have probably forever offended pig-owners with my lackluster pig creation skills.
LL says he’s studying optics and has specific knowledge to refute my invisibility system. I can only take him at his word that he’s right. I’m sure there are geneticists out there who are deeply bothered by the genetic engineering discussions later in the book. All I can do as a writer is create these things in a way that is going to be plausible within the limits of my knowledge, and hope that it will be plausible within the limits of knowledge of most readers, who aren’t pig-breeders, nanotechnitions, or geneticists. As long as I’ve given it my best, good faith shot to get it right, all I can do is shrug when someone points out an error in a book that’s in print and move on.
PS: I don’t seem to be able to get the citation tags to work on my quoted escape scene. Any theories what I’m doing wrong?
SlyShy on 28 April 2009, 12:36 said:
None of the tags were really meant for multi-paragraph spanning, so if you need to enclose multiple paragraphs you’ll have to enclose them separately.
The exception is the blockquote tag. Normally it operates like:
bq. A single paragraph of text.But you can do:
bq.. multiple paragraphsWith paragraphs denoted by line breaks, as usual. The catch is that it’s going to keep blockquoting paragraphs until you signal it’s time for a normal paragraph.
p. Normal paragraph.swenson on 28 April 2009, 13:46 said:
Maxey does have a good point- if he was still trying to keep the reader from getting the “no wai, sci-fi” feel, then there’s not really a need (at this point) to make the descriptions sound reasonable.
By the way, I think I may take you up on that offer to get a digital copy… I don’t believe any nearby libraries have it.
Marie on 28 April 2009, 18:54 said:
I guess the problem is that I don’t think I agree with your definition of science fiction. I would probably call it Speculative Fiction, just because I have even less idea what that means :D But having read the description of what does happen with the powder, it reads to me like magic. Magic with scientific roots. Not that misunderstood science can’t seem like magic, but I find myself doubting the level of control needed over such tiny particles, not to mention it sounds like it’d need much more volume to work, because of all the spaces between particles…I think it’s obvious that science-wise I don’t have much knowledge, but from the scene I would just assume magic, and in fact, for a fictional world, would find magic more plausible. For whatever reason, I still feel like I’m reading fantasy more than science-fiction. And I don’t see the plausibility, in the way you’re speaking of it.
SlyShy on 28 April 2009, 20:55 said:
Marie on 28 April 2009, 23:54 said:
But of course. And there have been science fiction books that use such “sufficiently advanced technology” and I never question it. But the fiction has mark it enough as science as opposed to magic for me as reader to accept it as science. When “feels” like magic then I’m less likely to buy it as fiction. Sorry, I guess it’s just my quirk.
Asahel on 29 April 2009, 00:05 said:
I once watched a 50’s sci-fi show in which the heroes used “Cold Light” to become invisible. As the main hero explained, hot light can make you see things that aren’t there, as in the case of a mirage in the desert, whereas cold light can make you not see things that are there, so they used it as a cloaking device.
Needless to say, any chance the movie had of me taking it seriously was gone at that point. And, honestly, I’m pretty sure they knew mirages didn’t work that way even in the 50’s.
Now, what does this have to do with the invisibility powder… I’m sure it relates somehow.
wut on 29 April 2009, 00:49 said:
I don’t know about you people, but when I was a kid I’d watch movies for their stories and so. I couldn’t care less about details like that. If a main character said it was real, it was, until the credits rolled.
Then again, I’m also retarded and have long painful flashbacks that cause me to black out dramatically.
Legion on 29 April 2009, 01:23 said:
Yes, well. Conversations about the nuances of theoretical optic particle physics in a sci-fi/fantasy novel is what happens when disbelief becomes unsuspended. Suddenly, the validity of every little minute detail that the reader is just supposed to accept as is gets questioned. And of course nothing the author says will convince the now-skeptical reader of anything. The magic is unraveled and cold, hard logic has taken hold once more.
wut on 29 April 2009, 18:43 said:
I think everyone should watch A Beuatiful Mind. All the math explanations are still wrong, but it’s still a great movie.
Snow White Queen on 29 April 2009, 20:18 said:
Geez, leave for two days and then all this happens!!
Anyway, other than the spewing earlier between Jerk and lccorp, which is thankfully ended, I think this discussion is great. Both sides are bringing up great points, so that right now I think I’m straddling the middle in terms of opinion.
I have nothing in particular to say (not smart enough among all these science/ writing experts), except that I hope Mr. Maxey keeps posting, because I enjoy getting his PoV and seeing the back-and-forth.
Now, I’ve wasted too much time on this when I should be doing my HW…a sure-fire sign that II is doing things right. :D
lccorp2 on 30 April 2009, 10:17 said:
Well, I think we can call this discussion from post #39 onwards a very definitive success. Sorry for being a bit slow to respond, as well as this rather short response—I’m a bit pressed with real life at the moment.
—Thank you for your input, Mr. Maxey, and for the offer, sir, but I’m the sort of sad romantic who still likes to hold dead trees in his hands instead of a flashy kindle.
I think I’m beginning to understand what you meant by you were frustrated with people misinterpreting what you were trying to show them. Perhaps I’m wrong to interpret Vendevorex helping out Cron, stating he sees no need for unnecessary loss of life, and refusing to help wipe out the humans as statements of humanitarian ideals, whereas you wanted them to be reflections of a cold mind who somehow figured out that these courses of action would be the most convenient. I must admit was rather puzzled at the discrepancy (As you said, Vendevorex is supposed to be a product of his culture, as mentioned in a comment on the previous article, yet seems to be sticking up for the humans every time, then he’s supposed to be cold, yet there’re apparent discrepancies as mentioned above.)
—Ah, seems like there was another misinterpretation. The way the particles were described, it seemed as if the workings were like a giant disco ball. If the particles really do work and have enough computational power and amazing technology to take account of every single photon coming from every single direction in three-dimensional space that might have conceivably come into contact with Vendevorex, instruct another particle to emit the exact same photon of same intensity and wavelength, as well as wiping out every single one that happens to slip through—eh, well, it’s a bit of a stretch, but there’s nothing to say it couldn’t be done. As for getting molecules to line up, that shouldn’t be too hard—we can do it today with plenty of para-, ferri-, and ferromagnetic materials. Heck, there’re even youtube videos of liquid oxygen lining up in accordance with a magnetic field; you can check them out. They’re groovy.
—With regards to Blasphet, I’ll keep your comments in mind when I go through his proper introduction next chapter, even though I still believe he didn’t work for me. For comparison, I’ll use a very similar character, Dr. Impossible from Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible, a superhero story, and try to figure out why one worked and the other didn’t despite the extreme similarity between the two characters. I hope you don’t mind.
—I see with regards to the courtyard scene. Thanks for explaining. I still think there could be a spot more danger to Jandra’s breaking out that perhaps showed something more of both her and V’s wit in perhaps fooling intelligent guards, but moving it down to the courtyard probably wasn’t the best way to do it.
—Marie, it doesn’t really matter, it’s all Phlebotinium . As quoted:
If Mr. Maxey’s beliefs as an atheist made him decide he wants to use scientific phlebotinum, that’s within his rights as an author; most of the concerns I have about an author’s beliefs seeping into his or her work are when it starts actively warping the plot and characters in negative ways. Philip Pullman has been criticized for letting his atheist beliefs ruin the subsequent books of His Dark Materials, and Donita K. Paul is arguably on the other end of the spectrum with the implied message, in Dragonknight, for example, that atheists are essentially full of themselves, are morally bankrupt, and refuse to see the glory of God because of that. Both, in my opinion, are equally silly.
—Legion is right.
That’s it for now. I’ll be doing an article on when and how to take the “rules” as guidelines after the last of my papers, and then move on to chapter 5. I do want to get my schedule clear for the release of K.J. Taylor’s The Dark Griffin in August.
James Maxey on 30 April 2009, 12:02 said:
Perhaps I’m wrong to interpret Vendevorex helping out Cron, stating he sees no need for unnecessary loss of life, and refusing to help wipe out the humans as statements of humanitarian ideals, whereas you wanted them to be reflections of a cold mind who somehow figured out that these courses of action would be the most convenient. I must admit was rather puzzled at the discrepancy (As you said, Vendevorex is supposed to be a product of his culture, as mentioned in a comment on the previous article, yet seems to be sticking up for the humans every time, then he’s supposed to be cold, yet there’re apparent discrepancies as mentioned above.)
I don’t know that convenience is a driving motivation for Ven. It would have been most convenient just to go along with Albekizan and spare Jandra through his obedience.
As revealed in later chapters, Ven’s behavior is driven mainly by his desire to atone for what he regards as his greatest sin. (For those of you who requested the PDF, the backstory is told starting on page 271.) This manifests in kindness towards individual humans, and to his willingness to argue that humans deserve kinder treatment from dragons. But, while Ven is perfectly willing to help out individual humans (invisibly, in the case of Cron and Tulk), he’s not willing to fight for a revolution. Killing Albekizan doesn’t equal freedom for humans, in his thinking. Humans are trapped in a larger cycle of oppression where they are unable to unite against the dragons because their tribalism leads them to fight each other more fiercely than the dragons. And, you asked in a previous post where in the book do I ever have him argue that humans benefit from having Albekizan in power. I’ve found a few places in the book where he espouses the virtues of a strong king—his discussions with Jandra in Chapter Nine, his later discussions with Shandrazel, and, in the very next chapter, when Jandra first asks why he’s not going to fight:
“We would return to our deaths,” Vendevorex said. “We escaped due to the haste with which I acted. We had the element of surprise. I turn invisible, not invulnerable. You of all people know how many of my magics are based on illusions. In a direct, violent confrontation with Albekizan, I could possibly best him, but then what? If I kill him, we’ll wind up with anarchy, or worse, under the rule of a buffoon such as Kanst. I see no immediate good options.”
Ven is essentially arguing the fundamental debate of the Iraq war: Do we have the power to remove a bad ruler? Yes. Do we have the power to create a better world in the aftermath? In our world, we decided yes the second time around. Ven decides no, and becomes a refugee rather than a rebel.
Admittedly, the explanations for all of Ven’s actions do lie in the future of the book. But, I frequently try to create reader expectations of character actions, then break those exectations to create tension (and, hopefully, intrigue), then give insight into how the broken expectation actually reflects a deeper nature of the character. With Ven, his actions make more sense once we learn why he’s raised Jandra (or, at least, they make more sense to me, and to many other readers, though I acknowledge your reactions have been different).
Puppet on 3 May 2009, 15:58 said:
I also don’t like these sporks, I would rather point out the things that are wrong with Paolini’s writing kindly, and (hopefully) help him improve, so when I see a kid reading his books I know that it’s something worthwhile.
As apposed to tearing apart his writing and having all the fans freak out.
Just my opinion.
Tim on 1 July 2013, 04:09 said:
Eh, I’ve never been able to buy Clarke’s Law as a concept and always felt it was him holding up science as magic to the silly primitives. Even if you showed an automatic door to a medieval mill owner, if you let him examine it closely he’d still see a rack-and-pinon linked to the motor. All technology, no matter how advanced, is fundamentally understandable, and thus always possible to distinguish from magic if one does not instantly proclaim it magic instead of analysing it.
Sìlfae on 1 July 2013, 05:50 said:
Well, I don’t know, I would agree that technology is ultimately understandable while magic is not, but a sufficiently great gap could not be easily (or at all) refilled.
What about a computer? Even today the average user doesn’t exactly know how a PC works, he knows how to use it (and that is not powered by magic), but he wouldn’t know how to build it or program it; what a Middle Age man would think about it? Wouldn’t he see it as no less than a crystal ball opening to far places and storing knowledge accessible when appropriately touched? It’s very unlikely he’ll grasp its functioning on his own and, even with the help of an expert, it would still take a lot of time for him to understand all those passages and mechanism composing it that we take for granted and have been developed over centuries of research.
Tim on 5 October 2013, 09:15 said:
I imagine a medieval man would still see hallmarks of manufacture in a modern computer: fasteners, materials he recognized, and simple mechanisms like the gears in the CD tray would be familiar to him. He might never understand ‘‘how’‘ the computer works or how it was made, but he would have no reason to assume it was magic. After all, he probably doesn’t himself know how to operate a forge, but he knows his plough wasn’t made by a wizard.
swenson on 5 October 2013, 10:10 said:
And that right there is what always bothers me about people from medieval/fantasy/otherwise “backwards” times thinking modern technology is magic. Look, they know what a wagon and a waterwheel and a plow are, right? They understand the concept of putting pieces together to create something to do something for you, yeah? So why should modern machines be so shocking?
Probably comes out of the whole dumb “medieval people/Dark Ages didn’t have technology and were stupid superstitious backwards people durrr!” attitude, though.
Epke on 5 October 2013, 14:57 said:
Or because they’d resort to “Magic! Witchcraft!! Burn her!!!” before analysing it?
Apep on 5 October 2013, 15:23 said:
I think it would depend more on the technology involved. I mean, show them a pocket watch and they’d figure it out. But something like an iPod? Yeah, there’s a lot of required knowledge that they wouldn’t have.
People back then were no more stupid than they are now, they just didn’t have a lot of the knowledge that we take for granted. And in some ways, they were probably smarter than we are now.
Sìlfae on 5 October 2013, 15:40 said:
Yes, I’d say that’s the crucial difference that may cause that kind of misunderstanding. A medieval man might understand how a considerably more advanced technology works if an actual expert takes the time to explain to him both the tool in particular and all the other mechanisms of which it is composed of, but, depending on the item, it could be less likely for him to understand its functioning on his own. The advanced tool itself, being a computer or a iPod, is not a single invention on its own, in its structure encompasses a lot of other things developed and improved progressively by many experts over a long span of time. We know how they work not so much because we’re smarter than our predecessors as because we’ve already been through the various phases of the evolution of that kind of memory-storing dispositives which has led to their current form and functions. For an average medieval man who barely knows how writing on paper works (or even a scholar who knows that) it is a huge gap to suddenly present a computer to him and espect him to succesfully figure it out. The attitude and reaction are another topic, in the previous post I was already considering a subject curious enough to analyze the item rather than smash and burn it.
swenson on 5 October 2013, 18:21 said:
@Epke –
Why would they, though? That’s my point. There’s no reason to assume something is automatically magic just by looking at it, especially when you have literally never seen actual magic before—because last time I checked, magic doesn’t really exist.
Besides, for most of the medieval period, nobody actually was all that against magic. They mostly either didn’t believe in it (primarily devout Christians and the Church) or thought it was pretty natural. In fact, in the early medieval period, witch hunts were outright banned by law because, well, official Church position and the position of most political leaders was that magic wasn’t possible. Persecution and killing of people assumed to be witches/sorcerers did happen, but it was pretty rare up until the Protestant Reformation, in the 1500s. It was only then that magic was linked with devil worship and thus condemned by religious people.
So even if they did think it was magic, people from most parts of Europe in most parts of the medieval era wouldn’t have had a problem with it anyway.
Also, burning witches is way less common than people think. Hanging was probably more common. And in 300 years, no more than maybe 50,000 people were killed anyway. (which, yes, is still quite a few, but it’s hardly like every week you go down to the village square to watch the latest crop of harmless old women be burnt.)
Tim on 5 October 2013, 18:39 said:
Yeah, but then you fall into the problem that an iPod is designed specifically to look advanced, rather than actually being advanced as such. Most supercomputers don’t have that kind of superficial “futuristic” look to them, even though they’re far more advanced than what’s basically just a memory stick with a touchscreen.
Sìlfae on 6 October 2013, 04:35 said:
Yes, the stance of the Catholic Church was kind of inconsistent for what concerns witchcraft, depending on the Pope in charge it could be considered real or superstition, but it is true the Church was more concerned about heretics than witches and sorcerers and trials for witchcraft were relatively rare in Europe and usually dealt by secular autorities. Still, fear of magic in folklore was presumably a recurrent factor.