[Monday February 20th] 8 Things I Learned About Deadlines

Who wins now? EH!

It’s been a month and I’ve nearly forgotten how to blog, which is funny, cause these days you can’t make me shut up. Work has been a bit crazy and my fingers ache from the constant tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard. Then I had to bounce around doctors for awhile, which further added unnecessary stress [nothing too serious with me] and then came news from the frontier to the West, where mother is working right now. In between all of this I’ve been pretty silent, because I’ve been chasing deadlines.

What advice about deadlines will tell is that you have to stick to them. What advice neglects to say is that you have to be extremely realistic about the number of deadlines or at least I’ve missed the guidebook to deadlines some way along the way. If there is a copy somewhere that no one needs, my e-mail is in my bio [just saying]. The gist of this post right now is that I’ve been an incredibly naughty boy and expected unrealistic things from myself.

As you might suspect already, I want to be on top of everything and it’s not been happening as planned. I edit for Tales to Terrify, I write and I review [though I thought I had stopped for good] and then I have several other big as hell blog initiatives, which more or less have fallen in the background. Top that with a full time job and university and you have yourself a basic recipe for chasing deadlines all the time. Here are the lessons I learned chasing deadlines and failing some times:

1] Write down everything connected to your project and deadlines. Most of the time, you will work in tiny bites of time. Managing fiction for a podcast has taught me that a big project is a clockwork robot rather than a brontosaurus, meaning that it’s a ticking organism with so many parts that take minutes separately, but letting them slip through the cracks of your mind will come back to bite you. This can easily apply to writing, which I learned after forgetting a few stunningly beautiful ways I could have employed in my latest story.

2] Newsflash: Life’s unpredictable, so you’d better learn to predict situations that will suck your time and be beyond your mortal control. Although doing what you love may offset the depression of having a job that suffocates you or [insert anything unpleasant you have to deal with every goddamn day], you have a real life with real people and other real things. Real life doesn’t like to be ignored. Hell to the no, girlfriend. Real life’s like a kitty cat, a bad kitty of imminent doom that poops on your head for no good reason.

If I hadn’t spent two weeks with intense pain, because of a bad back, I’d probably be on time with most of my deadlines. Plans mean nothing, when you are an unwilling component of this sick algorithm that is life. It’s a crucial skill to know how many projects you can undertake, which you are sure you will bring to fruition even if your life crashes in pretty painted flames of devastation.

3] You are not a time table. As much as I’d want to conquer the Internet and have hot men throw their jockstraps at me, I discovered that I can’t do everything. This is the basic mistake that I do time and time again. I assume that just because I have a free slot in my schedule and yes, I do have a schedule, I can put something in there.

So what happens, when you realize that your schedule has tasks that have you type and read for what feels like eternity and your brain says, enough is enough. Naturally, you crave some sort of outlet, be it skimpy books in pink covers [I stopped reading those, when I discovered that the skimpy pink books came only in female fantasy editions rather than gay fantasy ones] or reality TV [either classy and/or campy for me, please] coupled with as many TV series as I can watch. Maybe you are one of those weird people that go outside and talk to people, fleshy bits to fleshy bits. In translation, work will not be done. Work that needs to be done and you can’t complete, because you are exhausted. Plan activities that will allow you to recharge your batteries or I tell you that you’ve got a first class ticket to Burnout Land. PS: It will not be pretty. It never is and it’s the fastest way to hate something with burning passion.

4] You are responsible for your guilt. If you assign yourself too many deadlines, you don’t meet, because you sought to take a rest, you get your high and then what. Guilt that is what. The wrist-slitting guilt that has you all tossing and turning at night, accusing you that your careless ways are what will always separate you from those that have succeeded in their career. So unless you want to flirt with a sharp set of razor blades and set yourself for low self-esteem and failure, why not cut yourself some slack and what you are realistically able to complete as projects.

5] A deadline does not mean waiting for the last possible moment. The Internet is full of memes, where students consider their teacher’s deadline a challenge to see how late they can start with their paper. Don’t be that douche that purposefully starts at the last minute possible. I’ve done this stunt a couple of times and I’m far from proud with myself. Plus, apart from the inevitable guilt you will generate, your work will be sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. So do yourself a favor and start as early as possible.  

6] Don’t expect people you’ve put on a deadline to remember their deadline. Through my work at Tales to Terrify, I learned the hard way that delegating tasks and expecting them to be done isn’t as innocent as it seems. I did that. I trusted the powers that be that everything will be honky-dory and forgot about the deadline. Guess what. This came back to bite me, cause shit happens to the people you collaborate with. They get sick. They get involved in some sort of life conspiracy and the last thing on your collaborator’s mind is your deadline.

7] Talk with your collaborators about updates. If you want to avoid feeling like an idiot, negotiate with your collaborator how you as the one with the request will proceed in regards to the deadline. Set a few check point dates that will ensure that you get all the updates needed without coming off as a panicked, desperate ninny. You also get the bonus of psychologically engaging your collaborator so that even if suddenly something comes up that will cause delays, your collaborator is way more likely to warn you, even though in the greater scale of things your deadline matters. Of course, I’m referring to all the projects that run on good will rather than money. When money is involved, people tend to be a lot more organized.

8] Content first, publication later. To continue my thread, I’ve always started projects even before my involvement with Tales to Terrify, where I relied on people’s content. A normal person would be cautious enough to arrange the deadlines for the contributors long before they are needed. It’s way easier to schedule something that you have rather than something that you have promised to have. I, on the other hand, assume that everything runs on fairy magic, so I had a few close calls, but lesson has been learned. Everything can happen and a good deadline chaser knows that time is a stretchy, gooey thing that runs through the fingers.

   

[November 28th] A Touch of Racism in Music

It’s been quite the debate over whether or not Florence + the Machine’s video for their single “No Light, No Light” is racist. Youtube’s comment section has gone up in flames and several official music critics have expressed their negative opinions in regards to the video. The cause for this criticism is the painted in black Asian dancer, who performs voodoo rituals during the video. Here is the whole bit: 

I’m not convinced the video is racist. It’s decision to play a black-white motif [and I’d like to point out it has been present culturally long before the color became attached to races] with a set of religious beliefs that has everybody’s panties in a twist. To the average viewers pitting Christianity against Voodoo will represent Good versus Evil, mainly because misconceptions about Voodoo as a dark craft are still well and alive. What I believe this pairing to represent is the conflict between rigid control [Christianity] and the close to the heart desires [Voodoo] in the context of a dramatic, forbidden relationship, which throws the one receiving its affections off kilter [here comes the image of falling]. 

But Harry, the painted-black voodoo priest has a voodoo doll and pins it with needles? 

Yes, imaginary reader I’m having a dialogue with. The priest does have a doll and uses the most recognizable imagery associated with Voodoo to illustrate the passionate throes and pain associated with the type of love, which Florence sings about. Florence never sings of anything easy. She intensifies every feeling, every motif in her lyrics to the point that it overloads the human emotional circuit-board. 

It’s not an easy love. It’s all possessing and all possessive. It vibrates and finds itself in every aspect of the singer’s existence. If you watch the video closely, you will see that all the time Florence is laying in bed with a man, which means that the video sequence is happening within her soul space, it’s a conflict and questioning of what to do and how to behave. 

On the outside, she is as calm and controlled as the choir of young boys are [the idea of false self-control is reinforced through the scene where she falls through the stained glass roof], but below the obvious surface she is rocked with these storms of emotions, sweet and torturous at the same time. 

To me this would have been racist, if the dancer chosen to be painted black was Caucasian, which would have been a tasteless call back to racism in cinema, where people from African descent were portrayed using ridiculously painted over white actors. The fact that they chose an Asian and painted him black, thus creating a race that does not exist, but has the quality of haunting and visually striking beauty, is a giveaway that we, the viewers, have to think in terms of symbolism. 

At the end of the day, however, I believe that this video will be perceived as racist, even if I don’t believe it. Working with religion, beliefs and skin color is dangerous, because these are deeply personal and defining to a lot of people. It’s the same with sexuality, especially the jab that homosexuals receive, so I can personally see as to how the video can and has offended a group of viewers, even if it had no intention to attack anyone. It’s the risks that you run with art, I suppose. 

Tell me what you think. Is the video racist? Should artists in any medium try and experiment with skin color and religion? Has a music video offended you?

[November 27th] Julianne Moore & The Succession in Art

The story I’m writing at the moment [titled “Blinding”] incorporates Bulgarian folklore, lore and fables. It’s echoing the path “Fables” and Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” in terms of transplanting characters from their plane of existence and their endings into our current state of reality. Considering that the inclusion of mythical beasts is a popular practice in the genre of Urban Fantasy as it is, I don’t consider breaking new horizons, other than contributing to the expanding story pull. 

The act of writing “Blinding” has me thinking about succession in art and the establishing of a permanent continuity that feeds the collective memory to newer generation through different retellings. “Fables” reintroduces fairy tales to children, who prefer comic books to regular old books and “American Gods” has peaked my curiosity as to the different deities, other than the Greek or Norse ones. Succession in art is common. 

The 80’s synth beats are reliving their glory days in nouveau electronic, pardon my French and the style of the 1950’s [which has influenced visual arts heavily] sneaks in movies, music and an eternal pin-up movement. Which brings me to Julianne Moore, Harper’s Bazaar and a very couture incorporation of famous paintings. Julianne Moore’s photo session has her adopt poses and style of some of the most breath-taking paintings in the last century, along with new creations. I've expected nothing else from Julianne Moore, who is a style icon in the celebrity circles. This concept photo shoot is quite exciting as it shows these memorable works in a completely new medium, which is far from the remakes that we see.

“Adele Bloch-Bauer I” – 1907 – Gustav Klimt 

“The Cripple” – 1997 – John Curring 

“Man Crazy Nurse #3” – 2003 – Richard Prince 

“Seated Woman with Bent Knee” – 1917 – Egon Schiel 

“Madame X” – 1884 – John Singer Sargent 

What do you think about succession in art?

[October 7th] On being an Outsider and Geographical Isolation

FantasyCon has me thinking a lot about myself and where I fit within genre and if I fit in at all. It's not my objective to cause drama or add in unnecessary angst, but I continue to consider myself an outsider to the UK genre scene. No matter how close I feel I'm getting thanks to the Internet and the relevant social media channels, this proximity is illusionary.

This thought popped in, when I discussed books with Lavie Tidhar during the weekend. He kept on mentioning names without any hint of recognition from me. I'm not that good of an actor as the best I can do is kinda nod with understanding rather than imitate the spark of remembrance. So, he just flat out asked “What have you been reading?” and it had me thinking. What have I been reading all this time? Since I'm a slow reader, the answer is not much, but even my speed is not the only factor.

I can argue that I'm young. I'm certainly among the youngest genre reviewers and promoters of the genre, if not the youngest, though probably not any more. So certainly the majority of the people have had a great head start and have read more books. I, on the other hand, turned to non-translated English titles five years ago and this only happened, because I functioned as a reviewer, a position, which granted me access to glimpse what has been happening westwards, while my country tried to overcome its communist past [it's failing by the way].

It all boils down to me not being in the UK, because even if I haven't been an avid reader from an early age, I would have been exposed to the full spectrum of the genre. I'd have a subconscious sort of link to the scene's roots. I'd have more chances to discuss relevant titles through the years. Seen or heard about the various awards and ceremonies.* I have none of that, so conversations about the books that come out or are already out there will be challenging. Keeping track of what's coming or has become trendy will continue to be a conscious effort. Name recognition will remain difficult.

I'm not bitter about it. I'm far from considering myself a unique case. I'll just have to fight for the knowledge or you know, move to the UK.

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* I only heard about the Man Booker Prize after a year of reviewing.

[September 23rd] Super Blowup Dolls to the rescue

As you know I've been keeping close tabs on The New 52 DCU reboot. This week DC writers have introduced readers to the brand new liberated sexy ladies. The examples are Catwoman and the new Starfire in Red Hood and The Outlaws. Laura Hudson discusses the issues with DCU's take on women with provocative characters at Comics Alliance:

But the problem isn't Star Sapphire. Or Catwoman. Or Starfire. Or Dr. Light raping Sue Dibny on the Justice League satellite or that stupid rape backstory Kevin Smith gave Black Cat or the time Green Lantern's girlfriend got murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator. The problem is all of it together, and how it becomes so pervasive both narratively and visually that each of these things stops existing as an individual instance to be analyzed in a vacuum and becomes a pattern of behavior whose net effect is totally repellent to me. As an anomaly, maybe Starfire could be funny, the way the big-breasted, over-sexed Fritz (who even got her own porno comic, Birdland, which is pretty good if you're into that) is often funny in Love and Rockets, mostly because the series is already packed full of incredibly diverse, fully-realized female characters. But as the 5,000th example of a superhero comic presenting female sexuality in tone-deaf ways, it's just depressing.

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And the problem is that when I look at these women, I would very much like to see confident ladies who enjoy sex and are having a fun sexy time. But what I see instead are women who give me the same impression as creepy dead-eyed porn stars mechanically mouthing "oh yeah, I want it." And that feeling of coerced sexual enthusiasm is the creepiest, saddest, most unerotic thing I can imagine. And if I were able to have a boner, seeing something like that would make me lose it every time.

I've had issues with both titles, more with Red Hood rather than Catwoman. Laura nails down all that made me cringe and not connect with the titles completely. I think that the issue with the end panel in Catwoman, where Selina is riding Wayne, is that the sexual release acts as Selina's go to method for dealing with bad days and depression. Yes, Selina is down and the way Batman consoles her is with a Bat-gadget that only he can provide. This is not to say that I didn't find the panel erotic or tasteful. Batman and Catwoman are wonderful together and I expected Selina to get Bat's pants down, but the timing is off.

Instead of seduce him, she clings to his anatomy like some people cling to food, sappy music or movies [or whatever you do when you feel sad] and the panel in this case takes away from her power rather than empower the character. Selina's just one of those girls with a complex or low self-esteem issues that need to have sex to feel better. That's not the case, but to me it looks like it is.

Starfire is the worst example of how sexually objectified women are in comics [at this point I can even say that the Star Saphires are better presented]. First, I don't have a background with her as a character other than the Teen Titans animated series, where Starfire appeared as the goofy and kind hearted and sweetest girl ever. Tamaran, in the animation, praised love and emotions. I believe the animation used these cardinal principals from the comics.

In the New 52, Starfire can not even remember her teammates, because to her every human looks the same and therefore is not worthy to remember. While this character trait promotes racism [white people and Asians, anyone?] the biggest issue is the absence of love in sex for her as a Tamaranian. Never about love. It's physical and basic. What happened to the love? To veneration of emotions? Forget about pleasure, the stilted and casual deliverance of the line "Just that love has nothing to do with it" combined with the catalog posing in previous panels, is just wrong. Starfire is not a woman, she's a husk. A super powered blowup doll.

I'm saddened to see sex brought low-brow. I don't mind seeing sex. Yes, superhero stories are not by definition sexual as action and violence dominate themes. When I do see sex in comics I'd like to see my heroines as avatars of sex and not the cheap, imitations, the superpower blowup dolls you can contort into pale resemblance of sexuality and sensuality.

[September 5th] Thoughts on JLA Issue 1

In the wake of The New 52 here is what I think about the 1st issue of the new Justice League series. Statler and Waldorf summarize the rollercoaster I entered, when I opened my issue:

Jim Lee’s art kept me attention. Although I’m not partial to how he draws Batman’s chin [I’m guilty of watching too much The Brave and The Bold], Lee commands the panel. I wish that Geoff Johns could do the same in the writing department. While it’s true that he captures the emblematic douche-ness of Green Lantern Hal Jordon [a character I dislike and the more I’m exposed to his dialogue, the more I dislike the comic]; I feel as though half of what he says is unnecessary.

I’m unaware what the general opinion for infodumping is for comic books, because I’ve read older series, where a speech bubble took two thirds of a one-third-page panel, but Geoff is in details, which I don’t care for. Do I really need to know how Batman got the tip for the alien thing that did something at the docks? Do I really want to know Hal’s life story, considering both heroes are on the run from the police?

After the initial introductions between Batman and Green Lantern, the issue follows a very repetitive pattern. Batman says something, Jordan acts on impulse rather than any reasoning, something unexpected happens and then Batman swoops in to fix things. Check the ending, which foreshadows Batman vs. Superman fight*. I’m also not at all pleased with Batman’s new need to prove himself superior or more accurately the writer’s goal to have him be superior. The easy peasy way how he figured how the power ring worked and guessed what the robot planted in the sewer, when the power ring failed too.

Another issue I had stems from Cyborg’s pre-hero arc. While I do care, who Victor Stone was before becoming Cyborg, I don’t believe starting as far away from his origin is justified. First, his appearance is disconnected from the main plot [though plot is an overstatement right now] and then this first issue has to establish the readers’ interest in a staccato pace. Maybe Stone’s accident as a cliff-hanger would have boosted the appeal.

Is this a bad comic book? In on itself, no. Considering how many months went into The New 52 in terms of promotion and promises how everything would be altered, yes. I’ve read worse, but I can’t deny that this issue suffers from inefficient storytelling.

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* Also who else thinks a Batman vs. Superman brawl is as cliché as ideas come.

[August 20th] YA Fiction is Female Territory, No Boys Allowed

I've been minding my own business on Twitter, when the @booksmugglers tweeted a link leading to a NY Times article, which in short complains that there are no books for boys and that YA books target a predominant female audience. You can see from the opening paragraph that you're about enter a bizarre world:

"At an American Library Association conference in 2007, HarperCollins dressed five of its male young adult authors in blue baseball jerseys with our names on the back and sent us up to bat in a panel entitled “In the Clubhouse.” We were meant to demystify to the overwhelmingly female audience the testosterone code that would get teenage boys reading. Whereas boys used to lag behind girls in reading in the early grades, statistics show, they soon caught up. Not anymore."

The author, Robert Lypsite, tries to convince the readers of his article that boys don't read because all modern YA fiction is geared towards girls. I think what Mister Lypsite is trying to say is that most popular and marketed YA novels that are spoken of are somewhat female centric. The Twilight boom has definitely boosted the profile of this particular YA genre. Is that a bad thing for boys and their literacy? Not necessarily.

For one, I as a boy always tried to read books written for adults. Can I say that based on my own experience I can judge for other boys? Probably not, especially not for American youth, when in fact I live elsewhere, but from my experience boys that do read, have been reading books with a very adult content, which was not especially targeted for them. Again, this may have a reasonable explanation in my country's case as we survive on the translated works from other countries, with our own national literary scene decomposing somewhere.

I think that boys read, but they may not read what Mister Lypsite is selling at the moment. As with all genres there are trends, certain genres and certain audiences rise to prominence, but that does not mean that there isn't anything else out there for other target audiences. It's just not in plain sight, which I think is far from the dramatic question Lypsite poses in his title "Is there any hope?"

Furthermore, I take gripe with the fact that most of his statements read like fabrications without any solid examples. Who said that editors "ask writers of books for boys to include girl characters — for commercial reasons —" and why would that "further blunt the edges"? I'm not a fan of the reasoning that a girl in fiction acts as a kryptonite for masculinity. And then of course comes the mandatory bash-speculative-fiction with "supernatural space-and-sword epics that read like video game manuals and sports novels with preachy moral messages — often seem like cynical appeals to the lowest common denominator".

Right, so the issue that Lypsite has is that boys are reading, but not what he's selling. Though I may be a bit biased by now, cause he certainly bashed speculative fiction. The whole article he wrote supports the theory that boys are interested in different readings such as nonfiction and that modern themes such as "disease, divorce, death and dysfunction" test better with girls. And I'm certain that should boys shift their interest in massive numbers to a genre, the industry will definitely pick it up and alter accordingly.

Plus, I think that the majority of boys are reading speculative fiction at the moment, but the one aimed at adults [though I am just stating this as a fact I have no data to back it].

SO, is there any hope for us poor, boys?

Jules Verne: father of steampunk, science fiction icon or educator?

NOTE: This is the first part of a piece I did on Jules Verne. The whole piece was written for the Beyond Victoriana blog, but the I managed to develop two ideas and the piece splits perfectly into two shorter ones. The exploration of what sort of genre Verne pioneered didn't exactly fit with the Beyond Victoriana's focus on steampunk, so I'm posting it here. I'd like to warn that this is the accumulation of what I've read from Verne and about Verne.

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When I embarked on reading Jules Verne for the first time, I wanted to trace steampunk’s root in literature. Verne has been, more often than not, hailed as steampunk’s father, a claim I find to be suspicious, considering how Verne lived through the Victorian era. Essentially he had witnessed every technological and scientific advance. What he wrote run [mostly] parallel to what happened in the world. In this article, I hope to examine – or at least try to – what can be considered steampunk, what not and what exactly Verne wrote as a genre.

The problem is that Verne didn’t write genre as we understand genre today because today’s concept of genre did not exist during his time. The stories Verne wrote were classified as “scientific romances”, and that term had a very different defitnion from what we would classify as “science fiction” or even “hard SF”.

When I hear steampunk, my first association is with steam. I think about an alternative Earth with a well-defined Victorian-inspired aesthetic and atmosphere, serving as a background for an adventurous tale filled with steam-powered technological wonders. The elements I’m listing are cosmetic, sure, but also the first logical connections a reader makes when hearing steampunk. Accent, however, also falls on technology’s inherence to the genre and its role as a girder for the secondary world.

Reading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” confirmed that Verne didn’t write steampunk. No, his fiction comes closest to hard science fiction in terms of how science has been incorporated in the story. Both “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island” present the reader with an impressive amount of detailed information; the result of Verne’s devotion to and passion for scientific detail. Verne goes at great length to maintain an accurate scientific representation in both text; a defining theme for hard science fiction as a genre.

“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” comes closest to fulfilling steampunk’s definition as science and technology are vital in the book. Perhaps one sixth of the text explains and clarifies how the Nautilus operates. If there is no Nautilus, there is no story.

However, the Nautilus runs on electricity and not on steam. Small, but significant difference. During the 1870s, electricity remained untapped and still undeveloped as a resource, while submarines ran on mechanical energy. Verne’s Nautilus, at the time, was a far-fetched design, both in scale and sophistication. In fact, it was after the success of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” when submarine design and construction underwent considerable developments and electricity became a commodity rather than a luxury. Since Verne lived during the Victorian era, it’s obvious that he looked into the future, creating a singular machine, which constituted the new technological era in human history.

However, it would be unfair to classify Jules Verne as a hard science fiction writer or science fiction writer in the purest sense. The most typical hard SF tropes are missing. Verne’s writing – save for some exceptions such as “From the Earth to the Moon,” its sequel “Around the Moon” and “Off on a Comet” – doesn’t deal with intergalactic voyages or the explorations of other worlds, even though the undersea voyages in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” can be considered as the exploration of a foreign world. His interest lies more in the natural sciences rather than the potential for technological progress.

This particular theme in Verne’s fiction can be explained by the purpose of his Les Voyages Extraordinaires ("The Extraordinary Voyages" in English). While Verne wrote to entertain, he also wrote in order to educate the average French family as during his lifetime illiteracy about geography and other natural sciences. Countering ignorance is also Pierre-Jules Hetzel’s, the editor and publisher behind Verne, objective behind the foundation of his the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation [Magazine for education and recreation] in 1863. The facts I’ve read about Verne’s life don’t indicate whether Hetzel had to convince Verne to take his own writing in this direction or whether Verne himself was eager to do something about this then-serious social issue. However, reading about how close both men worked with each other and how their business relationship grew into a lifelong friendship, it’s safe to assume that Verne was willing to accept the concept.

His technique to incorporate science in his writing was to discuss science with acquaintances and scientists that he knew. Jules Verne, himself, wasn’t a scientist. Nor had he traveled the world. His research didn’t come from past experience, but from reading all the available at the time literature. Essentially, what this translates to is that Verne wrote textbooks with plots and characters.

If one is to look closely at “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” it becomes apparent that this is as much an adventure story as it’s a textbook on geography [the constant updates on the ship’s route with generous descriptions of the scenery], on marine life [the countless hours professor Pierre Aronnax spends cataloguing fishes, mollusks and other marine life forms], on history [as Nemo tutors Aronnax about sunken ships and battles] and on oceanography, art and also a great deal on engineering.

Verne attempts to amp the adventurous spirit of the story, referencing to Homer’s Odyssey and effectively evoking the sense that this is an extraordinary journey. To a point, he achieves to keep my attention with the discovery of a sunken Atlantis, underwater hunts and vicious squid attacks. However, the book’s true purpose to act as a learning tool shines through and

“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” reads like a travelogue. There is no central goal to give the voyage any purpose, until Ned Land devises a plan to liberate Aronnax, Conseil and himself from the Nautilus. This moment occurs in the last third of the book and is barely developed to satisfy my expectations. The ending is rather rushed.

Verne is the master of the slow reveal – as the Steampunk Scholar explains in his exquisite take on the novel – and this storytelling technique worked to his advantage given that he was educating first and entertaining second [the almost crawling pace and lack of general direction testify for this arrangement for priorities]. However, compared to modern steampunk novels such as “Leviathan” by Scott Westerfeld and “Boneshaker” by Cherie Priest, which invest in a dynamic and fast-paced story, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” appears static.

“The Mysterious Island” also heavily relies on science for the story’s foundations, but Verne neither goes for steam, nor does he envision anything futuristic. I think it would be accurate to say that Verne pays tribute to Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”. Much like Robinson, the five colonists restart civilization on their island. What’s different is how Verne views the task at hand and manages to transform it into a textbook.

I was treated to charting expeditions in order to record and name all the various geographic formations, which is the continuation of how important geography is to Verne. I didn’t care for the geography of the island or how Cyrus Harding, resident engineer and miracle worker, estimated both the latitude and the longitude of Lincoln Island, though I imagine how useful and valued those skills at the time were. Through the young and unnaturally well-read Herbert, the reader encounters all the possible land animals, fowl and plant life. Much like Aronnax’s obsession with fish and mollusks, Herbert clarifies species, genus and whatever else can be said about any said organism. Through Pencroft’s efforts to maintain a more domesticated food source, the reader learns about agriculture. Then come lessons in how to fashion hunting tools, bricks, pottery, glass and even nitroglycerine.

Here, the focus falls on creation and gradual evolution rather than on adventures, and steam is nowhere to be seen. I realize that I’m very steam-centric, but steam technology defines this as a genre and the absence of steam in Verne’s work only disproves the claim that Jules Verne fathered steampunk.

The definition of steampunk as “a novel incorporating steam technology” is currently in flux, however. The best definition I’ve come across is in Surridge’s article on Black Gate magazine, where he defines a steampunk novel was one that addresses the tensions between industrialization & technology. And technology that was growing in prominence at the time simply happened to be steam, but he proves how the friction of technology is the keystone of steampunk novels.

The same crawling pace defines “The Mysterious Island”. As mentioned Verne is inspired by Robinson Crusoe’s tale and therefore he treats readers to a more slice-of-life approach rather any defined story arc. As with “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” the major goal - this time to leave the island - manifests near the end of the book, when the colonists’ lives are physically threatened. At the same time, the marooned convicts – the opposition to the colonists – are more or less a manifestation of chance rather than integral to the plot.

As established, Verne wrote educational science fiction [if I can use such a term] in order to promote awareness among adults and children. However, it’s exactly the didactic content that publishers in Europe and in the United States overlooked and chose to focus on the fictional, thus watering his work down, and presenting Verne as an adventurous science fiction writer. Modern adaptations of Verne from comic books to movies and to television reinforce this idea and most likely led to his title as ‘father of steampunk’. Inserting Mara as Nemo’s daughter [when in fact Nemo’s wife and children have been murdered] and changing Aronnax’s age in the made-for-television movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” [starring a young, appealing Patrick Dempsey] in order to fit a romantic subplot, contributes to the illusion that Verne did father steampunk—for who doesn’t want a bit of romance mixed with their adventure?

However, Verne’s writing and steampunk share several themes and tropes. The most obvious is the Victorian era, which for Verne was the present, while for steampunk a bringer of a very desirable atmosphere and aesthetic [I’m allowing my personal bias shine here]. Of course, the adventurous spirit also should be noted. Although, Verne overloaded his manuscripts with an array of facts and bogged down the pacing, the stories he told in Les Voyages Extraordinaires are nothing short than amazing flight of fantasy, which later on translated to steampunk titles now [I’m risking to insert George Mann and his series as an example].

In conclusion, what did Verne write? The best I can say is that Verne is Verne. At best, I can say that he pioneered with crossgenre, because he crafted stories, balancing between the fantastical fiction and the practical nonfiction.

Writing Foreign Cultures in Fiction and a Writer's Identity

Today’s post is an accumulation of responses to posts I’ve read as well as thoughts that have circulated in my mind in recent weeks. As such, don’t expect a structured post that goes on to make a point, but rather semi-connected musings as I reflect on being a writer from a different culture and a different language, writing in English and in hopes to appeal to the American or British [preferably both] industries.

Not a long while ago, I’ve been advised to play my strength and write about my country, since nobody writes about Bulgaria. It’s a small country, therefore unique and overlooked. I can see the merit in that proposal [yes, I’ve brainstormed ideas and toy with a modern Bulgarian UF], but this also prompted me to look back to everything that I’ve written so far and hope to write.

Because, you see, such a suggestion directly touches upon my identity as a writer. What you write about defines who you are. At least this my take on it. I’m decidedly non-Bulgarian or otherwise I would have written in Bulgarian rather than in English like a friend I have, whose work is inspiring and profound. Or at least trying to introduce the Bulgarian culture with its admirable qualities and faults. Not impossible, but a lot more harder, because Bulgaria is hard to convey in a different language, as is any other country for that matter.

No, I find it a lot more easier to throw scathing references to Jersey Shore, then sprinkle some Buffy the Vampire Slayer, surfer & 70’s slang along with other typically American cultural staples.

It’s easier because the American cultural dominates the world. The US has established one of the largest cultural hegemonies in the world. When communism finally fell in my country and Bulgaria could finally enter the world, culturally America influenced us a lot. I grew up with Cartoon Network, Looney Tunes, Disney and what not. Same with music, same with cinema and television. Bulgaria adopted reality TV with successful Bulgarian versions of Dancing with the Stars, Music Idol, Survivor, Music Academy and Big Brother. Even our food comes from American franchises such as the eternal McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, KFC and we even have Starbucks now.

All these things coexist with our loud taverns, greasy snack-selling kiosks, chalga music and Bulgarian superstitions and small personal rituals [all of which I love; well minus the chalga]. I’m not here to say ‘Grr, those pesky Americans are to blame,’ cause they nobody is at fault that one culture is popular all around the world. But it does explain why I find it easier to use the cultural references I grew up with and write for a considerably larger audience, because a lot of people look up America and are interested what comes from there as music, movies and literature.

Perhaps that makes me a traitor as my friends have joked about it. Perhaps my choice to look to the West, instead of looking in my cultural heritage, robs of me of my very own identity. I do fear that I’m doing the impossible, writing about a country that I have never stepped in and therefore can’t understand, which is a lot more different than being an immigrant in the USA or any other country for that matter. Do I even have an identity from a cultural standpoint? It is one of the toughest questions that I stand before.

There has been talk about multiculturalism in speculative fiction, about introducing different [overlooked] countries, about representing people of color and even challenging the ideal for beauty as fellow writer Theresa Bazelli did in her post ‘Searching for Beauty’:

“… that was when I started noticing things I'd taken for granted. I realized that most of the women that the men pined after in the stories were either buxom red heads, cool blonds, or girl next door brunettes. In the odd occasion that there was a raven haired girl involved, her skin was always pale and perfect, or at most, a Mediterranean olive.

…

I just hope this makes you writers stop and think. You may think that you're writing your novels just for entertainment, and yes! I hope you are! but consciously nor not, you're teaching the world about what you value and what you call beautiful. What you leave out shows just as much as what you leave in.”

And the current ideal of beauty belongs to which culture? Yes, the American, which I want to mention in order to illustrate how complex the issue with cultural identity is and how hard its diversification will be. Because culture is not only art, religion, literature, music, but also the ideal of beauty, the dining manners, the body language [whether people will look you in the eye or avoid eye contact] and even the way a person will cross the street [which speaks a lot about Bulgarians].

I’m pumped to take on the challenge; throw magic, folklore and Bulgaria in the pot, but it’s not that easy from a technical side. I’m not writing for my fellow Bulgarians [who don’t read in English] and know the culture as well, if not better, as I do. I’m writing for outsiders, which makes brings a whole set of problems attached with the execution.

Ekaterina Sedia’s essay “Seeing Through Foreign Eyes” pretty much nails it:

“Each culture has its own baggage, assumptions, background noise that is so familiar it fades into invisibility. References common to everyone in any given culture that require no explanation – and it is tempting to assume that the rest of the world shares them. Who doesn’t know Nancy Drew or Crisco? So when reading translated literature, for me it is always a small jolt of joy to spot such things, small details that are so obvious to the author that they deserve barely a mention, and could only be guessed at. On the other hand, to a non-native, these things might appear strange and exotic, and the outsider will point them out and question.

In a way, this pointing and questioning mode of storytelling is common in fantasy: after all, we all are familiar with portal stories, where your normal person travels to a strange world and hopefully gets a native guide and will have things explained to them. In a way, American writers writing about foreign cultures provides the same set-up – they point and explain things a native wouldn’t find mention-worthy. They’re a guide who shares the reader’s references, and thus the things they find weird, the reader will too. They nudge conspiratorially, the writer is a reader’s ally, outside of the foreign milieu they are traveling through. If not careful, it results in blatant exotization.

A foreign writer describing their culture, however, is not the same thing at all. Their alliance is to the cultural milieu with which they share their perspective, and the American reader is thus pushed outside of the text; the readers may find themselves alone, and suspect that there are things being said they don’t understand. And it seems as if that’s a turn off to many American readers.”

Basically, for me it boils down to either write about my culture like a native and produce a book that could very well be unreadable – I’m a writer and I panic about this; it’s what we do to procrastinate – or conspire with my target audience [the bigger one, the US one], play the ever diligent tour guide and come off as a foreigner writing about Bulgaria. Let me say, it’s a lot more complicated than ‘we need more diversity in our fiction’.

As Ekaterina Sedia says:

“So the issue with books set in foreign cultures, I think, that even though many SF/F readers call for more perspectives and diversity, they don’t really want that. They want someone familiar to show them some exotic stuff without actually challenging the readers’ assumptions or values.”

I tend to agree with her.
___
PS: It's up to use to change that you. I've not given up. I do plan on writing about Bulgaria, but I wanted to also open myself to how difficult it is in my particular case.

Editor sued for running a negative review

I know that Sundays are generally reserved for Blog Spots and hopefully I will get to those as soon as possible, but for the time being with a rather nasty string of headaches. As a result, I feel rather drained to form any in-depth sentences. So I leave you with a rather bizarre courtroom case that is going down in Paris as we speak:

After running a review of the book by Thomas Weigend, director of the Cologne Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law, and dean of the faculty of law at the University of Cologne, “Dr Calvo-Goller wrote to Professor Weiler alleging that it was defamatory and asking for it to be taken down,” says the THE report, because it could “cause harm to my professional reputation and academic promotion.” She even provided Weiler with a positive review to run in its place. Weiler told her “The heavy burden needed in my eyes to suppress a book review has not been met,” but offered her space to reply. She declined and pressed charges of “criminal libel” instead.

To be fair, this case sounds less bizarre in context. The negative review, in question, relates to very niche non-fiction, which requires a very narrow and specialized knowledge to write. It's not complete overreaction [in theory] considering how a review affects the competence, reputation and credibility of a specialist. Had the review been truly aimed at the author and not the book [in this case it's not] then I can justify this happening. But given the circumstances explained in the paragraph above I'm inclined to think that this case leans more to being a farce.

“What did Calvo-Goller do wrong in this situation? Rather than covering up the fact she may or may not have written a credible ICC ‘Trial Proceedings’ book, she illuminated the fact that she may or may not have written a credible ICC ‘Trial Proceedings’ book.”

This is the actual morale of the story. Given the circumstances, Calvo-Goller should have kept quiet about her book not being perfect. It's human nature to be err and a faulty book can and will receive negative reviews. You screw up and try your best with the next.

Yes, the review was posted in a respectable and popular venue. However, what we must not forget is that negative reviews get posted all the time. People read them and that's that. Some of the times the review sticks with the reader, more often than not people forget they've read it.

What Calvo-Goller did was to not only bring the negative review to the attention of thousands more, but also making it stick. The verdict is due March and the defendant runs a column about the experience. This case is receiving attention and then after all this is over [whether she wins or loses] the trial will become a connotation to her name. I'm sure that it will taint her future readers' opinion of her work.

LESSON: When you try to vindicate your ego, beware how far you go and whether you have the justifications to do so. Considering that most of us focus on fiction, I doubt a negative review will get this to court [UNLESS you stole someone's novel; shame on you]. But when you decide to hog the spotlight, your ass is on the line. Beware.

The whole article can be found [HERE]