Vale JG Ballard

Earlier this month (19 April, to be exact), something happened that escaped my notice -- JG Ballard died. I don't know how I missed this news -- probably busy with my head in a book -- but it's something I should've taken notice of. It was only this morning, reading Time magazine over breakfast, that I saw a tribute to Ballard by Bruce Sterling. Sterling writes: "...the orderliness of his personal life allowed him to create a surreal, visionary fiction that was often frankly pathological".

If you've read Crash, it's easy to agree with this. Ballard is, no doubt, best known for this and for Empire of the Sun. Although I own the latter, I must confess to not having read it yet. Or have I? The more I think about it, the more I think I have. In any case, I did enjoy the movie. On the other hand, I've definitely read Crash, a disturbing book, but haven't seen the film. But it was neither of these that spoke most loudly to me. It was one of his short stories: "Billennium". 

"Billennium" is set in an overpopulated future, where humankind has solved the problem of feeding its burgeoning population, so that the main problem now facing humanity is the lack of space. It is the story of a man who lives in a cupboard under a staircase (hmm, sound familiar? Ballard visited it first!), but who discovers a secret room, a large room, which he can have all to himself. Or can he? He gives up his cupboard and moves in, and the story goes somewhere unexpected but completely inevitable. It's one of those stories that left me thinking, and thinking. And a few days later, still thinking.

Ballard wasn't a discovery of my early science fiction years, but of my middle ones. In my early years I read mainly Asimov and Clarke and Hoyle. 

I loved Fred Hoyle's The black cloud as a teenager. Years later, I read it again and it felt dated -- not so much in the science but the way all the characters were always smoking, which annoyed the hell out of me. (I had this gripe about Nevil Shute's On the beach, too -- another book I otherwise loved.) I read some of Hoyle's other books, mostly co-written with his son Geoffrey, but these didn't grab me quite the same way -- though I do remember a wonderful scene where someone skated down through Jupiter's atmosphere... Going a bit hazy there.

In my early days, I was a purist who preferred Clarke to Asimov -- mainly because of Clarke's ideas. Rendezvous with Rama was one of my favourites, but I also particularly enjoyed Childhood's end. And then of course there was the esoteric film 2001, which intrigued me (and I enjoyed "The sentinel, which it was partly based on, and loved the idea of Michael Collins considering telling Houston he'd seen a big black rectangle on the farside of the moon -- if only he had!). You know, though -- I think I preferred the less intriguing, more traditional  2010, at least at the movies. I can't remember which book I preferred. I do remember going on to read 2061 and perhaps even 3001. Did I finish it? I can't remember. I do remember that I found the lack of characterisation difficult to deal with, and these last two signalled the end of my reading Clarke.

Asimov grew on me first with a robot -- R. Daneel Olivaw -- in The caves of steel and The naked sun, but then even more in the Foundation series. Until then, I think I had mainly read his short stories, and I never liked any short stories as much as novels -- mainly because I always bought them by accident, and then would do the work and just be getting into them when they would finish. I've since learned to appreciate the form. 

Then I made the discovery that the unsophisticated but fast-paced Lucky Starr books I'd read when I was younger were by Asimov too, writing under the pseudonym of Paul French. 

But the Foundation series -- initially, just three books -- really blew me away. What a concept! How amazing. And then R. Daneel turns up in the Foundation series, tying this series with the robot series. More, more, more. Give me more. Eventually, I think I read the whole Asimov canon, and was amazed at how he'd set all his novels in the same universe -- in his universe. It was so cool. Later, after he died, I tried to read some of the follow-ons to the Foundation series, written by other authors. Greg Benford's was just too dry to engage me. I almost wept with disappointment.

Strangely, both Clarke and Asimov had their own three rules, though Clarke's were more about writing (apart from no. three), and Asimov couldn't count because he cheated and snuck in a Zeroth Law, which seemed totally right and necessary when reading the later Foundation novels. I imagine most people would be more familiar with Asimov's laws of robotics, and I confess I'm more aware of Clarke's third law -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -- than his other two.

The purists may prefer Clarke to Asimov, and indeed I've heard many of them snigger about Asimov, but to me Asimov's writing had a warmth, a human interest that I just couldn't find to the same degree in Clarke's books. It was this factor that I found in abundance in fantasy, which was why I responded so well -- and indeed shifted my allegiances -- to this genre.

Bradbury, as I think I've posted about before, was my first induction, and I will be forever grateful to him for the two seminal stories that changed my life: "A sound of thunder" and "The scythe". But the discovery that they were by the same author was for the future -- at that time I read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and liked it, but didn't feel the need to dip any further.

Then I entered my middle years -- which involved Ballard and Larry Niven through his wonderful story "Neutron star". I have these two in a book of ten SF stories everyone should read, but these were the two that resonated. (And I loved Asimov's footnote about how he said to Niven that he could have written "Neutron star" because he'd written a paper on the idea behind the story. And Niven had replied that he knew -- he'd read the paper and it gave him the idea for the story! Asimov said he was kicking himself.)

My later years gave me back the terrific Bradbury (with an 800+ page book of his short stories! Just heaven.). And with his more writerly Zen in the art of writing. A great book every writer should read. But in the meantime, I'd found fantasy.

So that leaves me with Ballard, who has just died. Such was his influence that a word was coined after him: Ballardian. It probably doesn't need explaining. Orwell is the only other author I can think of offhand (I am pretty tired) with his own adjective! Perhaps you'd like to remind me of the ones I missed.

In the shadow of the moon

Tonight, I went to see In the shadow of the moon, the documentary about the moon landings. I am a child of the space-age (just), and I remember as a child, leaving school with my class to watch the moon landing. I remember not quite understanding what we were going to see or understanding why, but, once the broadcast started, being entranced. At one point all the kids went off into another room to eat their lunches, and I just wanted to stay by the television. It could be, of course, a glorified and romantacised notion now of what really happened, but that's how I remember it. It had a huge impact on me, and no doubt seeded the future spec fic writer in me.

One of the astronauts in the film (was it Michael Collins?) talked about afterwards, visiting other countries, and the people talking about how we had done this -- we, as in all of humanity, something he'd never really experienced before. I got that. I felt it too -- this immense pride that we had been able to pull back impossible boundaries and do this marvellous thing. If we could go to the moon, we could achieve anything. We could rise above all the ugly aspects of our nature, the selfishness and pettiness and greed, and achieve greatness. Human beings might actually be worth something!

There are those who have always disputed the money spent on the space program -- that it could've been used to address poverty or pollution or something else, but you might as well argue that humankind doesn't need art. The space program is a powerful symbol of the peaks we can aspire to, an embodiment of hope. Or, if you want to take the bleak view, something we'd better perfect for when we completely stuff things up here.

And for me there was a writerly parallel in this film. Something I always find amazing is the chasm between the published writer and the unpublished in terms of their "authenticity" (for want of a better term). If my book were accepted tomorrow, then overnight I would go from being a small player in the scene to being a major player whose opinion was sort after and trusted, and I might not have learnt a damned thing extra in the inbetween time. This film, and The right stuff both touched on this too -- in quite different ways -- how the astronauts were suddenly catapulted to the position of national heroes, but they hadn't actually done a thing. How interesting to hear them talk about it from their perspective.

Would I recommend the film? Absolutely. Those who don't go gooey at the sight of a Saturn V (are there really people out there who don't?), who don't want to go to space camp -- or even better: space itself! -- who don't know who the Mercury 7 were, or the first Russian and American into space may not be as het-up about the whole film, but should find enough of interest anyway. Makes me want to go out and watch The right stuff all over again. Already the soundtrack is playing in my head...

The fantasy writer's profile

One of the key differences between science fiction and fantasy writers (and readers, I might say) is the ideal length of the manuscript. Fantasy requires a big canvas, whereas science fiction seems to shine best in shorter lengths. Most SF novels are a good deal shorter than fantasy novels, and it is in the short story length that science fiction really seems to sparkle. Fantasy is not well suited to the short story form, and there are far fewer fantasy short stories published -- so few, in fact, that I consider them a rarity, even in the magazines that claim to publish science fiction and fantasy stories.

Science fiction readers and writers denigrate fantasy as being big fat doorstopper books as if this is anathema to all that is good in writing. What they fail to realise is fantasy readers see this as a plus. I know myself I'd much rather read a novel, a long novel, than a collection of short stories -- I want to go on the long journey with the same bunch of characters. Short stories are hard work that way. I just get to know the characters and, pfft, the story is over. I'm not saying one form is superior to the other -- just that they are different, and different readers like different things.

So, I always find it interesting when people talk about building a career, and suggesting that the most important thing to start with is a series of short story publication credits. If I want to be a novelist, I want to be spending time thinking about my novel, building in depth, exploring plot twists. I can't do this if I'm writing short stories. That's not to say I don't write the occasional short story -- I do, but it's just not the form I'm most at home in. I do, however, think that the short story is an excellent training ground for would-be novelists. In a short story every word has to count. But every word should count in a novel too. There should be no flab. Long novels are not long because they are padded out, but because they have BIG plots.

I keep returning to an idea that Sherryl brought back from the States from the mouth of an American writer whose name I forget. He said that science fiction is a fiction of the brain, and fantasy is a fiction of the heart. Maybe that explains the difference too. Fiction of the brain -- ideas -- short story writers need lots of them. I can't say how much I admire prolific short story writers. My brain's not like that. But a fantasy of the heart needs space to develop the depth needed to really satisfy a reader.

I know Ian Irvine said, at the recent con, he would be astounded to find out that fantasy novelists needed a string of successful short story publications to be picked up. Most fantasy writers don't write them. Full stop. And I think that it's all very nice to build your profile this way, but will it really equate to more sales? None of the fantasy readers I know read short story collections, probably for the reasons I've outlined above. Still, it is nice to publish the occasional story -- just reminds you you are on the right track.

Saturday

On Saturday it was more of a SuperNOVA day. I headed across to Adam's to watch Claire shoot another scene for her SF movie Liminal. (I always hear her referring to it as The liminal but the opening credits of the film, as shown at the con, just had it as Liminal, so I'm going to go with that.) Adam's baby is the newest cast member -- so she had to grow a few tentacles for the filming. It's an interesting process to watch someone's house being transformed into a movie set. Claire's set design is cleverly portable, which made everything easy. We all know the adage of not working with children and pets, I presume. Is that because they're cute and steal all of the limelight? Or because they're rumoured to be difficult? I'm not sure. Ours was definitely cute, tentacled and all, and no more difficult than any small child would be (and a lot less so than a lot of Hollywood starlets, by all accounts). Anyway, after a clever suggestion from her mum, it was all done in a matter of minutes. Fait accompli! A new star is on the ascendant. Must say that I can't wait to see the final cut of the film. It's great to see Claire seguing so easily into the role of scriptwriter, director -- the lot really. Wonder if the people at Project Greenlight know what they've started?

I would post photos -- of this and the writer's party -- but I'm not sure of the etiquette of doing so without people's permission. Sounds anal? That's the editor in me talking.

Con day one (or two?)

Day 2 of the con, but my day 1.

Hmm, saw lots of good panels today, so might just list what they were and anything that came out of them that I found really inspiring.

(i) Where are the new dangerous visions -- interesting because there seemed to be some disagreement among the panel members (Jack Dann, Gillian Polack and Dina Taylor (hope I've got her name right)) adout where the new dangerous visions lay. Dina thought they were in gender, sexuality and race; Gilian thought in religion. Jack talked about magic realism and how it seems to have infiltrated other fiction -- which corresponds to my wonder about how MR is accepted in lit, whereas the rest of SF is frowned upon. Bizarre. Doesn't make any sense.

(ii) Isobelle Carmody's Guest of Honour speech -- very entertaining and with great sound effects. But she talked about how fantasy tries to name the unnameable, and how she thinks it's popular because it embodies that yearning that many of us have for something more in life. Interesting and reassuring to here her talk about not using lists of details. Although I do have a lot of worldbuilding stuff and character profiles, I sometimes feel I don't look at them as often as I should. But she married the whole idea of continuity with the push for publishers not spending enough time on the editing process. She thought they viewed it as part of the technical process rather than creative, and that this was part of the problem. I liked the way she talked about finding that not writing books in series one after the other keeps her fresh.

(iii) Worldbuilding 101. Ellen and I divided for this one as we also wanted to see the panel on good versus evil in fantasy, so Ellen did that one and I went along to worldbuilding with Ian Irvine, Gilian Polack and Keith Stevenson. Gilian thought that for good worldbuilding you need an addictive personality. Should suit me, I thought, as I am known to become rather obsessive about things. Ian Irvine talked about not getting too lost in the details -- something all panelists agreed on. Ultimately the worldbuilding has to serve the story, not the other way around. Some things of particular interest here were Ian's comment that if you try to create a world where everything is different, you'll end up having to spend half your novel explaining things, and will end up with a xenobiology text. He said lots of readers don't like his stories because they have only a touch of alienness, but that's why. Must say I agree with that. An audience member said he'd been to something where an editor said that to become a hotshot writer you should build a world, write six or so stories in it and then sell them to Asimov's. Ian said that that might be true of science fiction but that he would be astonished if it were true in fantasy because hardly any successful fantasy writers were writing short stories. I kept thinking of the SuperNOVA boys who would like to see me write more short stories. It's just not the genre or form I'm most comfortable in. I mention genre because I don't think fantasy lends itself particularly well to short stories. He also said that to do great worldbuilding, you don't need a PhD but a keen interest. Keith asked the others what the biggest pitfalls were. Gilian thought Mary-Sue. Ian thought putting too much thought into the worldbuilding and not enough into telling the story. He reminded us that every page has to have something interesting, exciting or curiosity-arousing to maintain tension.

(iv) Eating ancient food -- with Gilian Polack. She said that we focus obsessively on food in real life, but we hardly mention it in our writing. I found this interesting because one criticism I read levelled at fantasy quite often is that writers mention food too much. But perhaps it's just that thing about not being able to please all the people... She said a lot of writers get food right, but a lot more get it wrong, and that anyone who thinks people ate rotten food all the time in the Middle Ages is a zombie. She said spices were more expensive that fresh meat, and anyway rotten food disguised with spices will still give you food poisoning. Touche. I did get to try some Grains of Paradise -- a medieval aphrodisiac. Mmm, quite nice, too.

After this panel Ellen and I checked out the dealers' room, and then swapped notes about the panels we'd missed. Then we rehit the panel trail, marvelling about how some people like us go to cons for the panels, whereas another group rarely go on them.

(v) Teen angst -- Kate Forsyth said that someone said (Susan Cooper, I think, but I wasn't sure) that children are people without the coats of time. Interesting. Pamela Freeman said that she thought fantasy was popular with teens because it has an intensity of experience and element of idealism. Kate Forsyth thought it was because it often has a theme about empowerment. Lucy Sussex talked about the trouble she sometimes has telling whether a review book is meant for YA or adult audiences, and that sometimes price is the best guide. That was quite interesting. Pamela talked about how some people don't have a fictional imagination and are better suited to nonfic.

(vi) I wish I'd thought of that -- Keith Stevenson's talk about his theories of how people get down to write -- ie the pinball theory of creativity, plus some stuff to consider for worldbuilding.

Ellen and I had lunch out, and went out with Steve Gleeson for dinner, which was interesting as he's just come back from Vietnam so had lots to tell us. Anyway, we were late for the Ditmars, and as Ellen and I were on public transport, decided to come home and be very decadent and write. So I'd better heave-to!

Food for the writer's soul

Last night I went out for dinner with a good friend of mine who's a fellow writer. There's nothing better than spending a long, leisurely dinner talking about our novels and how they're going and what our characters are doing and ... Oh, I was in heaven. Nobody understands the passion of writing like a fellow writer. A fellow fantasy writer at that. We talked about books and blogging and other writers and all sorts of things.

We ate in an Italian restaurant that had wide open windows almost to our waist level, so it was almost like eating outside. After a balmy autumn's day the night was cool, too cool to sit outside comfortably in short sleeves, but this was perfect. We talked about the souvenir I had bought in Swan Hill for one of my characters, and how my dog has just half destroyed that, but how that damage has now flowed into the book as well.

She talked about the excitement of nearing the end of her first draft. Like me, this has been a long labour of absolute love, and so we also talked about the published authors we've heard speak at writers' festivals or conventions who say things like, "I don't particularly love writing. If my book hadn't been published I would have moved on and tried something else." That's a devastating statement for a non-published (at a novel level) author to hear. We know how hard the game is. We know that you need talent and dedication and persistance and more than a modicum of luck (especially with the timing!). One publisher spoke to a group of us telling us that she only takes on one new author a year. Doesn't matter if she has three potential blockbuster newbies; she only takes on one. That's another devastating statement. Bad luck for you if you sub just after she's accepted her newbie.

My friend will celebrate the end of her first draft, and so will I, because it's no small achievement. Many people start novels; far fewer finish them.

We talked about a review of a fantasy novel that I'd recently read (the review, not the book) and how I was surprised to see that it said that the book had left out all the boring bits about fantasy, ie the journey. That was something to reflect on because I love the journey. Maybe it's a hankering for my past horse-riding days, but the journey is one of the major attractions for me about fantasy. My friend loves it too. It brings me back to the science fiction versus fantasy divide that is so apparent in Australian writers -- so many science fiction writers are scathing of fantasy.

I like the quote that Sherryl told me that a writer at a conference she'd gone to in the US said: that science fiction is a literature of the mind, and fantasy a literature of the heart. I can't agree more.