So, I'm currently rereading Dan Simmons' Hyperion cantos, have finished HYPERION and am halfway through FALL OF HYPERION, and most surely it is a rich experience. But the reason that I decided to reread them was to get a close look at their structure and to get a better sense of what that structure does and whether or not it works, at least from my now-crustier perspective.

The first volume, HYPERION , has whats known as a framed narrative: the story begins with the pilgrims gathering for the journey to the planet, Hyperion, within which each character tells their own tale, and each tale presents background and elements of the greater story and enigmas. Previous examples of such a structure would include The Decameron, Canterbury Tales and One Thousand And One Nights. There are 7 pilgrims but since one of them goes missing during the journey 6 tales are related. Simmons also opted to add layers of intricacy to the framed tales as well - the 1st, The Priest's Tale, is itself a frame for the account of Father Paul Dure, a 1st-person journal narrative, passed on by Father Lenar Hoyt (who is one of the pilgrims). Hoyt is involved with Dure's story near the end, where his own actions are part of the tale.

The 2nd, The Warrior's Tale, is much more straightforward, being a 3rd-person narrative from the point of view of Colonel Kassad. The 3rd, The Poet's Tale, is a 1st-person narrative, bursting with the exuberance and vigour of the narrator, Martin Silenus (which some have said is a thinly-veiled homage to Harlan Ellison), but also a straightforward linear narrative. Likewise the 4th and 5th tales, The Scholars and Detective's tales, until we reach the 6th, The Consul's Tale. The Consul is the first character the reader encounters in the book and the overall frame POV is actually his, and when the Consul's Tale begins it is in 1st person; when we get to the end, though, we find that this account has actually been a recording played back on an antique comlog by the Consul to the other pilgrims. It turns out that the Consul (who remains nameless throughout) is the grandson of the man who made the recording. After this is a short section from the point of view of the Consul himself, relating the actions he took which led up to how the book begins.

Now, laid out like this, HYPERION's structure of framed stories and points of views seems immensely complex, yet it reads tremendously well - the prose never obstructs understanding yet it provides some wonderfully lyrical moments as well as some terrific characterisation. One viewpoint on conventional linear narrative is that that's all it is, a convention, and that writers are free to challenge it any way that they like, which is certainly true. But the potential readership is happy with that convention; linear narrative provides a certain rational sequence of cause and effect, which we naturally apply in our attempts to understand and live in the world around us.

And yet, life in the world provides plenty of evidence that synchronicity and unintended consequences abound, which tends to tug on the notion of cause and effect. Perhaps Simmons was trying to stretch the conventions of linear narrative without actually breaking them altogether. One particular writerly axiom says that form follows function, ie one chooses the structure and techniques which will create the kind of story you want to tell, and with HYPERION I think that Simmons employed the frame device (with the additional frames in the 1st and last tales) with the intention of pegging out a truly colossal canvas, the interplanetary web of the Hegemony with all its worlds, its histories, its religions, and its characters. And he managed all that in a single, if large, volume stuffed with invention and a richness of material that many other writers would have spun out into 3 or 4 books.

Interestingly, the wikipedia entry on the 2nd book, FALL OF HYPERION, says that it uses "a more conventional chronological narrative (although several jumps in time take place)". I would disagree; to my mind, FALL OF HYPERION is actually less conventional than HYPERION, employing shifting POVs and tenses that were not seen in the 1st book. But more on that in a later post.

Books kick ass, I feel bad for not reading more. I signed up to a site that lets you catalogue the books you read, that way I can precisely monitor my pathetic progress.

Olympos is the follow-up to Ilium, which I've told you about before. I loved returning to the universe Simmons imagined, and Olympos delivers. Indeed, how could a book that contains a detailed description of Zeus bangin the shit out of his wife not be spectacular?

I highly recommend Ilium & Olympos to any fan of epic fiction. Seeing as GRRM is still taking his sweet ass time to deliver the next ASOIAF, I'd say these two books have been a godsend *rimshot*

UPDATE Oct 5th: I'm halfway through Olympos right now, and while I'm enjoying it, it's below Ilium... Simmons should've gone through it a couple of times more maybe. Oh and fuck that book site I previously mentioned, I found a better one and updated the link.

[...] "You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second," Ian Bird, who heads up the LHC Grid project, told the Associated Press. Within those billions of pixels -- collected by a multitude of ultra-sensitive sensors within the tunnel -- might be a few that show minimal evidence of a new sub-atomic particle.

Still, despite all the hype and the hope, scientists truly don't know exactly what they'll find in this grandest of all scientific experiments. "What I would like to see is the unexpected," Gerardus t'Hooft, a physicist at the University of Michigan, told Reuters. Perhaps, he says, the LHC "will show us things we didn't know existed."[...]

Like the alien artecraft the Russian expedition uncovers at the site of the Tunguska Event in the Bruce Sterling short story Storming The Cosmos (collected in Globalhead) the LHC seems to become whatever its proponents or opponents imagine it to be: a machine that will swallow up the world with a hideous burp or a treasure trove of quantum mechanical candies and sub-atomic sweeties.

In the aforementioned story, the imagination of the observer is made real. So, whereas the Russian army imagines the alien artefact to be an unstable rocket leading to the - at the time of publication - unexplained Nedelin catastrophe, the story's main protagonists, two whacky and dissident rocket scientists, picture themselves surrounded by booze and women in a Paris penthouse. The moral of the story being be careful what you wish for.

However, reality, as ever, is bound to prove more mundane. The LHC is located in boring Switzerland after all (although talking of holes, there are plenty of suspicious looking cheeses over there; and while we're on the topic of freaky coincidences - and tell me, are you feeling freaked yet? - this year marks the centenary of the Tunguska Event). But nowt to worry. You may want to delay starting your countdown until The Big Mistake for the time being. Proper, big-bang particle-bashing is not to commence until the end of September.

If you understood all that, without clicking on the links, you're a bigger SF nerd than I ever was.

UPDATE: Ken (via the comments) has more. Just ask Ken.

Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro (the Hellboy movies) has agreed to direct four new movies and produce scores of others for Universal Pictures by 2017. The deal will come into effect in 2012, as soon as Del Toro finishes work on his two Hobbit movies for MGM and New Line Cinema.

The films Del Toro will direct are new adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, as well as an adaptation of Dan Simmons' upcoming Drood, a novel chronicling the last days of author Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist). Strangely, no Hellboy 3.

Source

The Consul had been drinking steadily since before midday and now he felt the pleasant displacement - from reality, from the pain of memory - which allowed him to get through each day and night. Now he asked, his voice as careful and unslurred as only a true alcoholic's can be, whose turn it was to tell a tale.

Hyperion, page 174, by Dan Simmons

Questo romanzo è stato scritto nel 1989, contiene elementi diversi di fantascienza, in parte quella tradizionale legata alla conquista di nuovi mondi, in parte quella new wave e persino cyberpunk con il ruolo che viene dato alle IA e al loro cyber-spazio. La trama si svolge attraverso il racconto dei sette pellegrini e alla fine da ognuno emerge una chiave del mistero. ll romanzo è bello ma non sempre scorrevole, non per la complessità ma per via di qualche caduta nel ritmo. I personaggi a volte hanno un chè di stereotipato e a volte troppo fuori luogo considerando la lontananza dal nostro tempo, ma questo lo noto spesso negli autori americani - si finisce spesso per ricondurre le azioni dei personaggi alle tipologie comportamentali dell'America odierna. Altri particolari li ho trovati incoerenti, come banalmente cibi, bevande o alcuni usi e costumi, che si presuppone andrebbero irreversibilmente persi dopo il distacco così radicale dal pianeta d'origine. Ma alla fine non è un brutto romanzo, si fa leggere e ha degli spunti interessanti, alcuni racconti sono particolarmente avvincenti, soprattutto il primo - ovvero quello di padre Hoyt. I capolavori sono altri, ma mica bisogna leggere solo quelli. Mi pare di capire che si tratti di una trilogia, anche perchè sono giunto quasi alla fine del romanzo e si intuisce che il mistero rimane in sospeso. Credo che leggerò anche gli altri due.

Today science fiction is a thriving genre. The 'adventure sf' of the 1950s has given way to a 'hard sf' today. Instead of space cowboys fighting space monster before heading back to the space ranch for some space food, we now have intelligent books written by authors fully cognisant of the scientific realities of space travel. Words for me. Five of my favourite such books follow.

1. Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
This book and its sequel Judas Unchained are my favourite Hamilton books and I've read a few. In this series, humanity has spread to other planets through the use of stabilised wormholes, when an alien race is encountered, a race so violent that it was sealed off eons ago. Naturally curious humanity trips the lock and unleashes something terrible. This book also features investigator Paula Myo, one of my favourite characters from any book.

2. Space by Stephen Baxter
I've mentioned Space before, talking about the Fermi Paradox. This is not the only hard science tackled in the book. In fact the whole book revolves around a scientific and philosophical investigation, spanning thousands of years. The book is also inhabited by characters to care about, which turns it from text into classic sf.

3. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Unwilling soldiers return from their war to a society they no longer recognise, and which doesn’t sympathise with their experiences. Sound familiar? The Forever War was written in the 1970s, and is still not dated. A great achievement.

4. Ilium/Olympos by Dan Simmons
It was a close call between this and Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion by the same author. Dan Simmons writes fantastic two-part series. I tip my hat to robots who study Shakespeare, and revived Homeric scholars acting as war correspondents for Greek gods.

5. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Nanotechnology, a retro-Victorian society, a dilemma concerning education, all these add up to a fascinating look at a near future that may never be.

5. Pennywise the Clown - It (Stephen King)

It was my first venture out of the Children/Young Adult section of the bookstore. I was ten years old. I think I bought it because I was enamored with the cover (the old one, pictured above); I can't think of any other reason.  I haven't reread it since then, but that first scene of George Denbrough's fatal encounter with Pennywise is still vivid for me two decades later. That book pretty much changed me as a reader. Everything I'd read up to that point (a lot of Roald Dahl and Lloyd Alexander) suddenly seemed so safe, and, as a result, silly.

Scary clowns were well-worn territory in 1986, and, with Heath Ledger's Joker, it looks like they're still going strong. For me, Pennywise will always be the clown touchstone (not to be confused with Touchstone the clown).

Conversely, for an example of a monster that DOESN'T work, see the giant, immobile rubber spider at the end of the miniseries adaptation.

4. Sandworms - Dune (Frank Herbert)

I didn't even like this book, but the sandworms still impressed me. They themselves might not be that interesting, but the whole culture built around them is so deep and textured. I guess that's another aspect of what makes some monsters work: characters' reactions.

3. The Terror - The Terror (Dan Simmons)

(that's not him)

I feel weird putting something so recent on this list, but I'm very excited about this book and what it effect it's going to have on horror literature. It would be dishonest of me to exclude it. There are so many fears and anxieties getting twisted in Simmons's Arctic survival epic: man v. nature, rich v. poor, rationality v. the supernatural, intellect v. instinct. Simultaneously lurking outside and sitting pretty in the center of it all is the polar bear demon that comes to embody just about everything that has ever been frightening to everyone ever. It's a heavy load to expect a scary bear to carry, but he does. I can't recommend this book enough.

2. Smaug - The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

There are thousands of dragons in the whole of fantasy literature, perhaps more, but there's only one that matters. Vain and petulant, Smaug is the king of dragons because of his human qualities more than his monstrous ones. You can have any opinion you want about Guillermo del Toro's two forthcoming LOTR prequels (mine: excited about the first, dubious about the second), but nobody does monsters like that guy, and I don't doubt for a second that he's going to give us something outstanding with Smaug.

1. Azathoth - The Whisperer in the Darkness, Dreams in the Witch House, other stuff (H.P. Lovecraft)

Just about any of HPL's eldrich sanity-blasters could go on this list. The man is simply unparalleled when it comes to creature creation. I'm going with Azathoth instead of Nyarlathotep or even the Big C because of three words: Blind Idiot God. I love that. The idea that the most powerful, molevolent force in the Universe is also a simp is just chilling. Doubly so now that we've endured the past eight years of politics in the US.

I'm kicking things off with The Terror by Dan Simmons, a monster of a book that clocks in at 769 pages and focuses on the real-life disappearance of an arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin in 1845. It follows the voyage from its early days to its bitter end, imaging along the way a "what if" scenario of human tragedy and supernatural events that attempts to explain the fate of the missing sailors. Terror is both the name of one of the ships and the name given to a mysterious predator that seems to be stalking the British sailors—and picking them off one by one.

The story unfolds through a mixture of flashbacks, letters, journal entries, and multiple viewpoints that reads like a literary version of LOST. It's an incredible achievement of the imagination. What could have been ponderous in the hands of a less skilled writer becomes both a heartbreaking and thought-provoking page turner under the direction of Simmons. Not many thrillers take the time to explore the human condition with such depth and subtlety.

As for the ending... it left me pleasantly puzzled. I won't spoil anything by saying that there are several ways you could interpret the revelation at the end, and a quick glance at Amazon's discussion boards reveals that each one has its backers. It's a fitting ending to one of the best novels I've read in years.

From author Dan Simmons' website:

Producer Graham King has set up Dan Simmons' award-winning science fiction book series "Hyperion Cantos" at Warner Bros., with Trevor Sands on board to adapt the first two books as one feature. King is producing via his GK Films banner.

The first book, "Hyperion," won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1990, while the second, "The Fall of Hyperion," was nominated for a Nebula Award for best novel.

"Hyperion" deals with a space war, with most of the action taking place on a planet named Hyperion, known not only for its electricity-spewing trees but also for the Time Tombs, large artifacts that can move through time. The tombs are guarded by a monster called the Shrike, which impales people on metal trees.

King acquired the rights to the series several years ago, but its structure, inspired by Boccaccio's "Decameron" and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," and its multiple timelines made the task of adapting it into a feature unwieldy and challenging.

Brought in by GK Films' Grey Rembert and Gail Lyon, Sands won over the execs by taking a selective approach to the two novels' multiple points of view in a way that managed to coherently and unconfusingly tell the story.

Well, actually, it's only one metal tree: The Tree Of Pain.  Dan clarifies the news further on his website:

“All of four of the Hyperion Cantos novels and my novella “Orphans of the Helix,” which is also set in the Hyperion-universe, were purchased for a six-figure sum by Graham King’s company IEG – International Entertainment Group – about three years ago.

“The original idea that sold the film – or franchise of films -- was based on a treatment I wrote and it was pitched and presented by two able young screenwriters. In that approach, I had deconstructed all four of the Hyperion novels so that the messiah-character of Aenea and her lover and protector Raul Endymion would have a presence in all of the films, including the first one – Hyperion. Their love story would be the continuous thread that would connect the three or four films of a Hyperion Cantos movie franchise.

“It was the actor Leonardio DiCaprio who first showed active interested in this idea for the film andfor some time there was discussion of him doing the film with director Martin Scorsese. The first draft of the screenplay was written two years ago – not by me – but producer Graham King didn’t go with that approach and the project stayed inactive since then (even to the point of my contractually not being able to announce the details of the purchase of the books.)

“Now Graham King Films has joined in partnership with Warner Brothers to make the film version of Hyperion. As you can see in the Hollywood Reporter release above, one approach now being discussed is to combine the first two novels – Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion – into one film (rather as Peter Weir combined two Patrick O’Brian books to make the film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”) – but as is always the case in the early days of such a project, everything is in flux.

“While writer Trevor Sands has been brought aboard by Graham King for early work on story concepts, there’s been no final selection of either a definitive screenwriter or director yet.

“However, there is one director I know to be under consideration who would be wonderful for “Hyperion: The Movie.” I’m not at liberty to mention his name yet, but this director knows the Hyperion Cantos novels very, very well and has a strong sense of the cinematic potential of literary SF. Indeed, one of this director’s upcoming films is a much-anticipated reworking of an SF-movie classic.

“Those who know movies and movie-making know that there’s never a guarantee of a project being completed until the last shots are in the can – and even then some films are never released. But the Graham King Films – Warner Brothers announcement of the Hyperion Cantos purchase and their plans to go ahead with the “Hyperion” movie is a huge step forward.”

I have to say I'm thrilled that it's not going to be Aenea and Raul the whole way through.  Part of the great appeal of Hyperion, the novel, is its structure in comparison to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the subtle yet twisted relationships between the pilgrims on their way to the Time Tombs.  The introduction of two characters who don't take stage until the third novel would muddy the story quite a bit, even if Dan himself did write the initial treatment. 

I've publicized Dan's books here before (and in the Stephen King forums to great extent) simply because not only can the man write in any genre you can think of, but everything he does is well done, not a halfhearted attempt like so many authors I dredge through.  Hyperion is, quite simply, the most magnificent sf book I've ever read; I have two copies and have read it six times.  And that is not faint praise: I love and own every Asimov novel I could find (well over 80 of them), as well as every novel by Arthur Clarke, Greg Bear, David Brin, Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Anne Rice (before she went all goofy).  Dan Simmons has written both my favorite sf novel, Hyperion, and my favorite horror novel, Carrion Comfort. 

If this movie finally makes it to the screen, I'm going to be a very happy young man. 

Big B: Whas up?

KMont: My dare review for The Book Smugglers!

Big B: Dare review? Dare I ask?

KMont: Why not, you're the Big B – you're not scared, are you? Basically it's a review I did where I went beyond my comfort zone. I chose horror as the genre and then Thea and Ana chose three of their faves for me to pick from. Lo and behold, I chose Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. Gotta say, Blogosphere, it kinda hooked me, when I'd already prejudicially turned my nose up. I mean, I hate horror...or so I'd thought. But really, you should go check it out! Click the book, the book is the portkey, whoooeeeeooooo...if you dare.

This question arose from two overlapping events. The first came from reading Day of the Triffids (link goes to my post); although I don't remember how I came to the book, someone must've recommended it on a blog or newspaper in compelling enough terms for me to buy it. Its weaknesses, as discussed in the post, brought up science fiction and its relation to the larger book world.

The second event arose from a science fiction novel I wrote called Pearle Transit that I've been submitting to agents. It's based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness—think, on a superficial level, "Heart of Darkness in space." Two replies stand out: one came from an agent who said he found the idea intriguing but that science fiction novels must be at least 100,000 words long and have sequels already started. "Wow," I thought. How many great literary novels have enough narrative force and character drive for sequels? The answer that came immediately to mind was "zero," and after reflection and consultation with friends I still can't find any. Most novels expend all their ideas at once, and to keep going would be like wearing a shirt that fades from too many washes. Even in science fiction, very few if any series maintain their momentum over time; think of how awful the Dune books rapidly became, or Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series. A few novels can make it as multiple-part works, but most of those were conceived of and executed as a single work, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (more on those later).

The minimum word count bothers me too. It's not possible for Pearle Transit to be stretched beyond its present size without destroying what makes it coherent and, I hope, good. By its nature it is supposed to be taunt, and much as a 120-pound person cannot be safely made into a 240-pound person, Pearle Transit can't be engorged without making it like the bloated star that sets its opening scene. If the market reality is that such books can't or won't sell, I begin to tie the quality of the science fiction I've read together with the system that produces it. Heart of Darkness—forerunner to modernism and one of the deepest and most mysterious novels I've read—had only about 40,000 words. In those 40,000 words, it contains more than the vast majority of novels I've read with four times as many. The Great Gatsby isn't very long either—60,000 words, perhaps?—and yet by the standards of contemporary science fiction, apparently neither would be publishable. If this is true, then the production system for science fiction might be harming the ability of writers to produce fiction at the highest possible level.

The other rejection came from an agent who read the entire manuscript. He said he liked it and thought the writing was sharp—an adjective I've seen before in rejection letters—but that it was "too literary" and shouldn't be as "complex." It can't bode well for science fiction in general if its gatekeepers are allergic to the idea of literariness, that ineffable quality that haunts this post even as I don't or can't define it. To be sure, it's possible that the agent who called Pearle Transit "too literary" was being nice or using a euphemism and really saying he thought it was boring, or stuffy, or something to that effect, but even if he was, I still think his word choice is illustrative.

The two rejection letters and the literary quality of Day of the Triffids show specific examples of a general phenomenon regarding science fiction. It's unfortunate that the entire genre gets tarred as junk by some critics and readers when in reality it's not entirely junk—if it were, I wouldn't write a long essay describing it. I have a theory as to why science fiction often gets labeled as junk: it values other qualities than aesthetic novelty/skill and deep characterization. It's more concerned with ideas rather than how ideas are expressed, while the greatest literary fiction sees ideas and their expression as inextricably linked. At the same time, though, I think that science fiction's defenders might bring on the literary snobs' ire by doing things like calling them literary snobs when many aren't actually snobs, but just have standards that science fiction too infrequently reaches in part for the reason I just stated. This is also why, I suspect, science fiction has trouble achieving the critical and academic recognition it should probably have, especially given its larger impact on the culture. I'm one of the defenders of good writing being good writing regardless of where it comes from, but the more science fiction I read, the more I realize so much of it just doesn't have the skill in narrative, detail, character, sympathy and complexity, language, and dialog that readers of literary fiction demand. I still like a lot of science fiction, but most of it now causes me to roll my eyes and skip pages: characters have no life, the books have no lifeness, clichés abound, and strong setups devolve into variations on cowboys and indians.

There are very significant exceptions, as I said regarding Day of the Triffids:

The only science fiction novels I'm aware of that could stand on their own as a literary achievement is Stanislaw Lem's Solaris and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Some others are serviceable and worthwhile, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion, Frank Herbert's Dune, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Walter Michael Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Philip K. Dick's better novels. But none are great novels, though Gibson comes closest, and while I don't think the genre is incapable of housing real greatness, the relative lack of literary merit gives me pause when I continue searching for satisfying science fiction.

Jason Fisher of Lingwë - Musings of a Fish wrote an e-mail pointing out that Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 probably belong in the "exception" category too. I agree, as long as they're fully included in the science fiction umbrealla—while Orwell and Huxley were kind of writing science fiction, their books were much closer to the traditions of allegory and satire, even if they happened to use some of science fiction's trappings. Someone like Stanislaw Lem or Le Guin, on the other hand, produced genuine science fiction. Bradbury I'd forgotten about, but it's been too long since I read his books to judge them. Granted, this argument might turn into boundary dispute regarding what's science fiction and what isn't, but I think there is something to be said for the science fiction that's grounded solidly in the "science" as in the technological future world, whereas I see Orwell, especially, and Huxley, to a lesser extent, as being closer to something like Gulliver's Travels.

Typing "Top science fiction novels" in Google reveals lists like these: the top 50 science fiction novels, the top fifteen great science fiction books, and the top 100 sci-fi books (never mind that some science fiction writers and readers hate the term sci-fi for reasons that are still unclear to me). Most of the novels on those lists don't meet conventional—an inappropriate word, given that great literature is by definition unconventional—literary standards, with the exceptions already mentioned. Dan Simmons' Hyperion gets close—very close—but still has that "not quite" feeling.

That Michael Crichton gets on any lists is a bad sign: the best review I've seen of his wildly popular and equally wildly uneven, and usually bad, work is in Martin Amis' The War Against Cliché, when he praises Crichton at his best as "a blend of Stephen Jay Gould and Agatha Christie" and then discusses what's wrong in the context of The Lost World, but it could be transposed to most of his Crichton's novels:

The job of characterization has been delegated to two or three thrashed and downtrodden adverbs. 'Dodgson shook his head irritably'; ' "Handle what?" Dodgson said irritably.' So Dodgson is irritable. But ' "I tell you it's fine," Levine said irritably.' 'Levine got up irritably.' So Levine is irritable too. 'Malcolm stared forward gloomily.' ' "We shouldn't have the kids here," said Malcolm gloomily.' Malcolm seems to own 'gloomily'; but then you irritably notice that Rossiter is behaving 'gloomily' too, and gloomily discover that Malcolm is behaving 'irritably.' Forget about 'tensely' and 'grimly' for now. And don't get me started on 'thoughtfully.'

So many science fiction novels suffer from the same problems: adverbs that proliferate like triffids, characters who are more alive silent than when they speak, and descriptions that deserve the Amis treatment, above.

Even Philip K. Dick, who aspired to be a literary writer prior to turning to science fiction, gets mixed notices, which Adam Gopnik explores in the New Yorker:

As an adult reader coming back to Dick, you start off in a state of renewed wonder and then find yourself thumbing ahead to see how much farther you are going to have to go. At the end of a Dick marathon, you end up admiring every one of his conceits and not a single one of his sentences. His facility is amazing. He once wrote eleven novels in a twenty-four-month stretch. But one thing you have to have done in order to write eleven novels in two years is not to have written any of them twice.

That’s probably why Dick’s reputation as a serious writer, like Poe’s, has always been higher in France, where the sentences aren’t read as they were written. And his paint-by-numbers prose is ideally suited for the movies. The last monologue in “Blade Runner” (“All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die”), improvised by Rutger Hauer on the set that day, has a pathos that the book achieves only in design, intellectually, because the movie speech is spoken by a recognizable person, dressed up as a robot, where Dick’s characters tend to be robots dressed up as people.

Gopnik is right. Dick himself wrote How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, which Jason sent me. It's a wonderful essay more about ideas and coherency than skill in conveying ideas through words. It's hard to imagine him writing something like Kundera's The Art of the Novel or E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. Maybe Aspects of the Science Fiction Novel, but that cordons science fiction from the greater literary sphere. I dislike the cordon, and yet the more I realize regarding what science fiction seems to value and what literary fiction seems to value, the more I wonder if it's really undesirable. In his essay, Dick is ready to join literary writers when he says: "The problem is simply this: What does a science fiction writer know about? On what topic is he an authority?" I read much bemoaning of what place, if any, the author has in times of national strife, like 9/11. The answer seemed to be, "not much." So Dick has something in common with literary authors. In his essay, however, Dick proceeds on a metaphysical binge rather than the deeper realms of what makes great fiction, as James Wood does in How Fiction Works, or Jane Smiley does in 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, or Francine Prose does in Reading like a Writer. He writes with great verve and depth about the nature of reality, our place in it, and societal problems—but he doesn't handle aesthetic problems or people as manifestations of those problems well. Characters come off as manifestations of problems instead of people, which is another way of saying what Gopnik did.

Other writers, like Roger Zelazny in the first section of The Great Book of Amber, is more bad than good, and his writing is frequently irritating for its James Bond tone in passages like this:

I forced my mind back to the accident, dwelled upon it till my head hurt. It was no accident. I had that impression, though I didn't know why. I would find out, and someone would pay. Very, very much would they pay. An anger, a terrible one, flared within the middle of my body.

The lack of a conjunction between "accident" and "dwelled" doesn't work here and is jarring, along with the running together of the sounds "it" and "till," especially when followed by the alliteration of "head hurt." Finally, the endlessly repeated action-hero trope of "someone would pay," is expressed exactly the same as it has been thousands if not millions of times before. Occasionally Zelazny wanders in the land of exquisite, terse writing, almost by accident, as when he says: "The night was bargaining weakly with the sun."

I've discussed a few of the novels that appear on those top science fiction lists and I've read most of them, although some, I admit, not recently. I like many though love few and suspect I would like far fewer had I not read them in that formative period where novelty is much easier to achieve simply because you haven't read all that much relative to how much you will. I think there is also something in the modern adolescent temperament that science fiction and fantasy appeals to: the idea that you're being held back and oppressed and that with time you will acquire devices or skills that lend you great power to overcome forces that seem to be evil. Later, unfortunately, you discover that those forces are not so much malicious as incompetent and lazy and that the structure of the world is very hard to change; what those novels often don't show is how the heroic quest is symbolic in the real world not of battling demons but of study, thought, and work. As Paul Graham says:

But if a kid asks you "Is there a God?" or "What's a prostitute?" you'll probably say "Ask your parents."

Since we all agree [about lies to tell kids and forbidden questions], kids see few cracks in the view of the world presented to them. The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. Schools are careful what they say about controversial topics, and if they do contradict what parents want their kids to believe, parents either pressure the school into keeping quiet or move their kids to a new school.

The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. It can be traumatic for the ones who wake up during the operation.

[...]

I remember that feeling. By 15 I was convinced the world was corrupt from end to end. That's why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. Every kid grows up in a fake world. In a way it would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated as a bunch of evil machines, and one could make a clean break just by taking a pill.

And when you're 15, you also have a lower threshold for art because, at least in the United States, most 15-year-olds aren't all that well-formed and haven't experience much; hell, I'm 24 and still don't feel all that well-formed. Still, if you get someone with plots about breaking through the surface world into some other world underneath, you're going to speak, in many cases, much more convincingly to 15-year-olds than you are to disgruntled adults who have the freedom to seek whatever they think the truth of the world is and choose not to exercise it, or who are responsible for keeping those 15-year-old dreamers fed and going to school on time. I've left out a small but very important group of adults who are still dreaming of greatness and trying to pierce the veil of reality, but I suspect they are entirely too small a group, and those who might join it are often invested in ideologies or systems or other simplifiers of what is a world too complex to explain through simple chants, or what Alain Badiou calls simulacrum and betrayal in his book Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil.

I still like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, and I still appreciate some of the criticisms he directed at judgmental society. But if I read him for the first time today, I would've already encountered his ideas, and there wouldn't be the depth of characterization or the skill in writing to carry me through. Then, it seemed original, and I wasn't old enough to perceive Stranger's paper-thin chatter masquerading as philosophy. Even Brave New World, for all its virtues, has some of those problems, as when the savage discusses Shakespeare.

This essay discusses science fiction, but its sister, fantasy, suffers from some of the same problems, which I alluded to in my review of The Name of the Wind and The Daughter of the Empire. In contrast to those writers, Tolkien gets deeper and stronger as you get older and more sophisticated, and I suspect Lord of the Rings is a well that will never run dry. First-rate fantasy seems to pop up more often than science fiction—here I'm thinking of Le Guin with Earthsea, or Philip Pullman with His Dark Materials. Even then, it's still common for writers to churn out elements in different configurations instead of trying, like Paul Muad'Dib in Dune, to break the nature of the genre publishing system itself. How ironic that a genre dedicated to transcending the scrim of reality relies on endless repetition of its core language and features.

After almost 3,000 words, I've described a problem, diagnosed some of its causes, shown some ways it operates, but not come to any conclusions. I'm not sure any exist, given the marketplace and reader incentives involved with both the production and consumption of science fiction. And if there is a solution, I hope readers of this are looking for it, and that I can be a part.

EDIT: A follow-up post deals with some of the issues raised in the comments and via e-mail.

I did not buy the MacBook Air at the Apple Store. Let's all bow our heads for a moment of silence to mourn this opportunity's passing........................Hell, who says it can't still happen? *grin*

On the up-swing of things, I did get to READ! Being sick in a hotel room makes for great, germ-defended alone time. No one wants to be near you except books and ginger ale, and to that I say aaachooooo! and hell yeah. I had the good fortune to frequent a local Barnes and Noble (yes, pre-Monday soar throat – I swar!), where I purchased Ilona Andrews's second Kate Daniels book, Magic Burns (after finishing Magic Bites on the plane ride up to Boston). I also bought the second in Stephanie Meyer's fascinating saga of Bella and Edward, New Moon. Both it and Twilight were sensational, thrilling and dabnabbit but I want the next one, Eclipse. Right now. I'll take the fourth, Breaking Dawn (Aug. 2, 2008) while we're at it.

Lemme tell ya, these are two awesome series (as if uuuhhh, most folks didn't already know). Andrews rights with a hard-edged sword of a pen that keeps me yearning for more of Curran and Kate's anti-socializing, while Myers brings back the desperation of youth and the sweet innocence I think we could all relate to at one point in our young adult lives. I'll definitely be reading on with both sets of books. I'll be posting duel reviews of the first two books in each series soon. I think I already know both will be receiving high ratings, since what I want more than anything at this minute is to go back and reread all four books pronto.

And to make matters even happier, I got to start on my first horror book evah, Summer of Night by Dan Simmons, which I'm reading on a (review) dare for the wonderful Thea and Ana over at The Book Smugglers. I'm on chapter six...and getting pretty sleepy with it all, but it's had it's good moments so far too. We shall soon see what the final word is from this decidedly un-horror fan. And last, but not least, I finally got to start the ARC of His Wicked Sins, by Eve Silver. First impressions? Classic Jane Eyre feel of gothic suspense and intrigue. I smell a winner.

And there's still more Boston to come! I'll be sharing some of the wonderful photography of my friend and coworker, Justin Selway soon as well. This guy takes amazing pictures, I promise! Art and books, what more could we want?

The book is an interesting read, and fun, but pretty much standard science fiction fare. The one science-fictionism that stood out for me is science fiction's need for unnecessary information. The characters, for instance, are often walking textbooks: Odysseus has the line, "If one of those asteroids --- or even a big enough chunk of one --- hits the ocean or land, it'll throw enough garbage in the atmosphere to drop the temperature by sixty or seventy degrees Fahrenheit in a few hours." While Odysseus could know about asteroids and the effect a large enough impact would have on the Earth, very few people could easily, and off the cuff, tell you that it would be a.) a drop in the range of sixty to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and b.) that this temperature change would take place over merely a few hours. The novel's omniscient narrator also loves breaking in to a character's point of view just to add unnecessary information (this limb is a vestigial limb, and this other item has this interesting but unnecessary factoid associated with it) which the view point character clearly doesn't know. In fact, many of the characters have grown up in a society which seems to have forgotten much of what we today would consider trivial knowledge --- such as the world being round --- and that seems to actively look down upon obtaining any knowledge at all.

Now I imagine that there are people out there who squee whenever a character or the narrator can drop in unnecessarily detailed information, but doesn't anyone else find that it just breaks the narrative flow? Aren't there other readers out there who stop to wonder just how Odysseus knew the exact temperature range and time frame for the after effects of an asteroid impact? Does no one read a throw off remark about how a piece of anatomy is vestigial and wonder what addition that factoid has made to the novel?

Blame it on hormones, medication, or the fact that I have two hands instead of one...but I now read two books at the same time.

To those that don't know me personally this might sound intelligent and well rounded. To those that do, well...it's just par for the obstacle course that is Your Hostess.

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It started back in the early fall. Someone had recommended Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and I wanted to read Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors instead of watching it as a movie. You probably recognize Bechdel from the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. Fun Home is an autobiography in the form of a comic. It chronicles the her childhood focusing on her complex relationship with her father. The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family. While I was throughly enjoying that book, I found Running With Scissors at the library. I sure you've seen the movie trailer if not the feature film...the book...I highly recommend. It tells the story of Burroughs' bizarre childhood life after his mother, who sent him to live with her psychiatrist. Completely by accident I had hit on the perfect combination.

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I did it again. This time with an author...Dan Simmons. I read Terror and The Hollow Man at the same time. The first book tells the story of the trials and tribulations into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. The second book tells the story of Jeremy Bremen and his secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own, and now he's running-from his mind, from his past, from himself-hoping to find peace in isolation.

...

My next pair came to me this morning in the form of an interview with Patricia Cornwell about her new book, The Front. You know her...the murder mystery writer...Kay Scarpetta and her gay niece (hmmm). She always writes with such incredible detail, and I found out why this morning. I really believe she thinks she is Kay Scarpetta...and that's OK with me. She had this strange look in her eyes the whole time Diane Sawyer was interviewing her. I was fascinated...and I think Diane was a little intimidated. Watching that interview made me realize how really good writers succeed. Part of them is always in their stories, literally and figuratively. So who to pair her with...

Then it hit me...

It was no contest really. Anne Rice. She's the only author that I have all hard bound books. Why, because since I read her first book back in college, I've bought every book she's written. And guess what...she's got that strange look in her eyes when I see her interviewed...and I just remembered that her new book is out. Christ The Lord: Road To Cana.

Look, I know what your thinking, there's no way these two are going to pair...in your world, but in mine they're a match made in heaven and the morgue.

As the pilgrims are kidnapped, killed or driven off by the deadly shrike, the humans of the web find themselves under attack from the deadly ousters. It looks like a war of annihilation as early video shows whole planets destroyed by nuclear bombardment. At this moment, the Core, AI machines allied with the web, offer a weapon to end all war, one press of a button to destroy the ousters.

The pilgrims are discovering the true nature of the Core, and Meina Gladstone, the web's leader, has her own suspicions, but no one else to rely on. The Keats character and his poetry becomes more important in this book, reminding me of Orphu and Mahnmut from Ilium/Olympos and their facinations with Proust and Shakespeare.

I won't spoil any more of the story for you. This book kept me nailed to the couch until I finished it. Mysteries unravel towards the end of the book faster than I can keep up with. Okay, so I guessed the identity of Moneta, but that was one mystery among many.

http://www.escapevelocitymagazine.com

The legendary Arthur C Clarke is featured; Pinup Girls: women who led - and some who still lead - in Space and Aeronautics; a photo feature of the Norwescon convention in Seattle this year; my interview with famous scifi author Dan Simmons; excellent fiction stories; articles like one from me on curious facts and coincidences about Earth's Moon; cartoons; poetry from Maggie Ball, and so much more.

You must know someone who would hug you for a copy, so why not give it a try? It costs less than a fast meal at MacQuacks, and lasts much longer.

If you're a fan of ebooks we are giving those away at the same link.

La grandeza de esta obra radica no sólo en su fantástico argumento, sino también su estructura narrativa y las referencias a otros clásicos de la literatura. Por todo ello, la adaptación a la gran pantalla de esta clásica saga se antoja complicada, máxime cuando el guionista Trevor Sands deberá fusionar los relatos de Hyperion y La caída de Hyperion en un único film.

No obstante, con el productor de películas como Gangs of New York, El Aviador o Infiltrados al frente del proyecto, se atisba algo de luz. Sin embargo, no hay que olvidar que adaptar la obra de Dan Simmons se trata de un auténtico desafío, por lo que de momento preferimos mantenernos cautos.

King comptarà en el projecte amb Trevor Sands per adaptar els dos primers volums -"Hyperion" i "The Fall of Hyperion"- en una sola pel·lícula. La història d'aquesta saga basada en guerres espacials transcorre en gran part en el planeta Hyperion, un lloc inhòspit on els arbres llancen descàrregues elèctriques i existeixen naus que permeten el viatge en el temps.

El llibre que obre la col·lecció, "Hyperion", va obtenir el premi Hugo a la millor novel·la en 1990, mentre que el segon volum "The Fall of Hyperion", va estar entre els nominats en aquesta mateixa categoria dels guardons literaris Nebula. King es va fer amb els drets d'aquestes obres fa diversos anys, però a causa de la seva complexa estructura, que es basa en el "Decameron" de Boccaccio i "Els Contes de Canterbury" de Chaucer, el procés per a adaptar la història al cinema va dificultar i va enlentir l'engegada del projecte. Sands va ser coguionista i director de la cinta "Inside" (2002), protagonitzada per Jeremy Sisto i va treballar en films menjo "Resurrection" o "Six Billion Dollar Man"

Kind of exciting to see a new film from Guillermo del Toro. Seems like an effective set of motifs being developed in his work (like the eyeless faces, small cold fairies, general ornateness).

Tropical Thunder

From director Ben Stiller, this looks like a cross between a parody of an action film, and an action film. And amongst the many stars, the one and only Steve Coogan but the buzz is all about a breakthrough strange performance by Tom Cruise as a overweight, hairy chested and bald bastard of a tycoon.

Iron Man

Robert Downey Jr without physical limits?

Hyperion

No trailor only rumour. Dan Simmon's remarkable dualogy to be filmed unless this will become one of those interminable never shoots. And the Shrike, a creature that just might give an Alien nightmares.