Archive for the ‘reading’ Tag
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber Leave a comment
The Process, Part One: The Stuff of Which Daydreams Are Made 4 comments
I once heard an author declare that the most bothersome question you could ask a writer of fiction was “Where do you get your ideas?” This happened at a science fiction convention sometime in the middle 1980s, during a panel discussion. The other authors present wore knowing smiles as they nodded in agreement. A long conversation followed, and an interesting one, that provided the audience with plenty to think about, but no real answers. In the time since I’ve resumed writing fiction, I think I finally understand why they failed to provide a definitive answer.
There really isn’t one.
Imagination is a thing poorly understood by science. The same is true of creativity in general. All human beings are capable of dreaming, and by that I don’t mean visions in your sleep, but dreams in the waking world, in which we ponder how things might be different, perhaps better, in our lives. Such dreams lead people to set goals and test limits, to see whether or not, or to what degree, their dreams can be made real. They have practical dreams, firmly set within a real-world frame of reference that entices them with the possibility of something potentially attainable. It seems doable, and so they get to work.
Artists, musicians, and writers go further. Their daydreams may have, upon realization within their respective media, practical consequences. After all, I’ve always dreamed of being a successful author. I still do. But that isn’t really the motivation. Rendering imagination, the daydream itself if you will, into a tangible form, drives the process. If you are of that inclination, you can’t avoid pursuing the vision, whatever it is. As a good friend was fond of saying about writing, some years ago, you can’t not do it. I learned the truth of this the hard way. I stopped writing fiction. I told the daydreams to leave me the hell alone. They refused to comply. It was an awkward and deeply unsettling episode in my life. Artists, musicians, and writers take it further, because the real ones have no choice.
So here I am, a writer with a head full of ideas and no clear way to tell you how they come into being. I daydream, and the daydreams become stories. Sounds pretty simple, but how does it work? And why? Why do I dream the dreams I do, about civilizations in the future, ships and swordsmen, hostile aliens, and worlds like our own – only different? Why does my imagination generate such things and not, for example, innovative business plans or experimental protocols? For that matter, why words and not music, or pictures? Why do I even have such a fertile imagination in the first place?
I can provide no solid answers to any of these questions, only the sort of speculation that comes from looking back across the years. I’ve always been this way. For the record, it really is a blessing, not a burden – which is not to say it’s always easy. As a youngster, before the idea of writing fiction ever occurred to me, I had a penchant for spinning yarns and windy stories. I’ve always related to the kid in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip because I lived in a similar imaginary world, and all too often the line between reality and imagination faded away. The consequences of that fade were sometimes awkward. It might be honest and accurate to say I was born with that style of imagination, that the root of it all is in some quirk of gene expression, but by itself that doesn’t explain the way the phenomenon manifests itself. The way my imagination works may be a consequence of the times in which I spent my childhood, the Sixties and early Seventies, when the race to the Moon was on and Cold War nuclear paranoia was palpable – even if you were too young to really understand the rhetoric. “What if,” was the big question on those days. The “what if” scenarios were not always pleasant.
I was also a skinny kid, and not terribly sociable. Being a bit of a misfit, the urge to escape was natural, and having a lurid imagination being fed by equally lurid speculations regarding space travel and nuclear war, you can easily guess the direction in which I escaped. I read mostly science fiction, adding fantasy somewhere in high school when I discovered Tolkien. The addiction to print was an early development, and the inclination to write in a similar vein just seemed to co-evolve. And maybe that really does explain it all.
Or not. As explanations go, it still feels incomplete. And even if it’s adequate for those reading these words, it says nothing about the creativity and imagination of others. It’s all surely variations on a theme, but others are writing those themes. This is just me.
These musings merely touch at the roots of a process that becomes, for me, a novel or a short story. Roots grow into places dark and fertile and strange. Maybe this is as deep as I should dig, for now.
Not The Book I Remember 9 comments
Science fiction is often described as a genre of ideas and informed speculation, anything but the “mindless fluff” the librarian in my home town, for example, believed it to be. The wildest, most outrageous sci-fi tales I’ve read have all been built around an idea. Only those completely unfamiliar with science fiction, judging its books by their often lurid covers, could for a moment believe this genre was dominated by “mindless fluff.” In science fiction, the idea’s the thing.
How that idea is used to tell a story makes all the difference. Handled properly, the idea informs the story and gives it purpose. Handled otherwise, and you end up with a novel such as Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, the sixth novel to be given the Hugo Award, and an otherwise well-executed sci-fi novel that for me has a serious flaw.
Starship Troopers is a coming-of-age story set in a future in which several of the author’s political views have come to be realized, a world in which one Johnny Rico stumbles through his youthful idealism and into a military career. This is a first person narrative, from the point of view of someone who is looking back over his life as he prepares for one more mission in the long war that has come to define him. Rico’s views make perfect sense for a man examining the experiences he’s had, and the trials he has survived. They also make sense in a novel written by someone who undoubtedly knew veterans of the Second World War, which was anything BUT ancient history when Heinlein wrote the book. You can see something in this novel, I believe, of the mindset that allowed a generation to survive the greatest conflagration in human history. The ideas that drive this story are for most part the politics of Heinlein’s time and his recent past, extrapolated – at times somewhat naively – into a none-too-distant future. And as should be the case, this is all intertwined with both a well-developed imaginary culture and an adventure that, together, give the tale a plausible context. As I started rereading the book for the first time in decades, it held up well to my youthful memories of an exciting space opera.
Until Chapter Eight.
When I first read Starship Troopers in my mid teens, the political undercurrent of the book was completely lost on me. (That some people actively disliked the book because they disagreed with the author would never have occurred.) I read the adventure, the coming-of-age tale, my mind’s eye filled with images of soldiers in high-tech powered armor battling alien “bugs.” What, if any, reaction, I had to Chapter Eight back then I can no longer recall. I reacted to it in this reading, however, with a certain amount of annoyance.
In Chapter Eight, which takes place during Rico’s basic training, a fellow recruit gone AWOL has been brought back to the camp to be executed for the crime of murdering a child. At first this event unfolds as another grim learning experience, to be endured because the murderer was “one of them,” and the military service to which Rico and the others belong insists on handling the matter. Left to this, incident would hardly comprise a few paragraphs, not a full chapter, but as Rico watches the execution his mind drifts back to a high school lecture that suddenly seems relevant to him. It’s at this point that the novel hits a speed bump. The story, which is well-paced up to this point, comes to a dead halt while the author, through both the imaginary teacher and Rico, pontificates on what Heinlein apparently believes are factors that will lead to the downfall of 20th Century Western Civilization – current events when Heinlein wrote the book. The lecture is, in part, a history lesson, and the history being examined from the perspective of this imagined future is nothing less than our own. The reason for its fall is summed up bluntly and naively as being due to fatal flaws in liberal politics and policy, as if any episode in history could possibly be put neatly into a little box that could be labeled “This Explains Everything.”
I do not agree with what Heinlein is saying; no honest student of history, aware of its complexities, would be comfortable with such a convenient summary, aimed at supporting a single political point of view. But that’s not what made me set the book aside for a day or two. This very same political philosophy is everywhere evident in the novel; so much so that at least one publisher rejected the book as being too controversial. You can’t escape it; what he is saying about duty and responsibility, however one-sided, is impossible to miss. And yet I was still able to enjoy the story as a thought-provoking exploration of those ideas. These being ideas I don’t entirely agree with, it says something about the skill of the author that I kept reading. I reacted with annoyance when I did because Heinlein stopped the story dead in its tracks to deliver a sermon.
It hurts the story, kills its momentum, its pacing, which was very well handled to that point. It took an effort for me to shake off my annoyance and go on reading.
I said before that I mostly disagree with Heinlein’s politics as revealed in Starship Troopers, even though I recognize some elements of truth in his over-simplifications. My objection to the blatant preaching in Chapter Eight is not political as much as the annoyance of a reader and a story-teller to a disservice done a good tale. It was an unnecessary diversion. Heinlein was already presenting the ideas at the core of the novel deftly and clearly as the story flowed along. If you were to read this book while skipping Chapter Eight you would, in my opinion, miss nothing. The message contained within the novel would have remained intact. Only authorial self-indulgence would be lost, and that’s rarely a bad thing.
I did go on, however, and cringed a bit as a small amount of similar lecturing occurred later in the book, while Rico is in officer training. To be honest, that material might not have bothered me much at all, because what Rico learns then is a part of the flow of the story. He is, after all, being challenged by teachers who are trying to determine whether or not he has what it takes to lead mean in combat. I was sensitized to these otherwise minor diversions by the speed bump I’d hit earlier. By rubbing my nose in the ideas central to the book, Heinlein made it impossible for me to simply let the story do its job. I was still shaking my head when I finished and set it aside.
Time and experience change the way you interpret the world around you. When I was fifteen years old and atrociously naïve myself, the ideas at the heart of Starship Troopers were largely lost on me. I knew Heinlein back then from works such as Red Planet and Between Planets, and with such stories in mind, I read Starship Troopers. I took in the futuristic adventure and nothing more, and so remembered the book fondly. As an adult, and having some understanding of politics, (enough to detest it on general principle, even as I recognize its necessity), I couldn’t let it go as a simple escapist adventure. Heinlein clearly didn’t intend the book to fill such a purpose. I can politely agree to disagree with people on political issues if they offer the same level of respect, but self-righteous pontification puts me right off. Unfortunately, Heinlein indulged in such in this story, interrupting a good tale in the process, and lost me.
This book won the Hugo Award in 1960. Apparently more people than not either enjoyed the story in spite of the politics, or agreed and enjoyed seeing their ideals cast in a tale told by one of the masters of the craft. Had the vote been taken in 1971, when I was 15 years old, I’m willing to bet I’d have voted for Starship Troopers. In 2013, at the age of 57, most likely not.
Either Way, It’s Reading 1 comment
It doesn’t take much of an effort to find weblog pieces and online discussions filled with curmudgeonly commentary on the possible elimination of “real” paper books. Books printed on paper, the curmudgeons fear, will soon be rendered extinct, unable to compete with the convenience of eBooks and magazines available on laptops, tablet computers, and dedicated ereaders. This looming apocalypse clearly arouses the disgust of many book lovers, with a few foolishly adopting the “cold dead hands” rhetoric for which NRA activists are known. Most are merely resigned to the changes in progress, shaking their heads (and sometimes fists) and grousing in fine curmudgeonly fashion that the world that follows this apocalypse will be inferior to the world they knew.
For lovers of books and reading, it will surely be a different world. But inferior? I don’t buy that. I’m eager to own my first ereader.
Now, like the curmudgeons bemoaning the sad fate of “real” books, I’m a heavy reader. I understand their love of reading. Books have been a major element of my life for as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t a proper Christmas unless one of the packages contained books, and when asked my preference for a birthday gift I usually had a title or two in mind. (If I didn’t, the adults in my life were very good at picking out volumes that pleased me.) So I can say with complete sincerity that I love books and reading. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the smell of books, and the sound of the pages turning. Most of all, I find the interaction between the words and my mind and imagination enormously gratifying – I always have. And in the joy I so often feel while reading, whether for entertainment or edification (or both at once), I have found an understanding of why my reaction to eBooks is acceptance, not resistance.
I love to read. Reading, not the book itself, is the thing. Flipping the pages, smelling the paper, feeling the weight – all of these things are sensations I associate with reading, but they are not the act of reading. The central matter is my mental and emotional interaction with the words, and through them the ideas and stories presented by the authors who arranged those words in the hope that someone might one day read them. Whether I’m adding to my knowledge of history or science, or escaping reality for a few minutes or hours, it’s the reading that does it for me. That’s the experience that counts. Once I’m into a book, the sounds and smells of bookishness are lost on me. It turns out that this happens as readily for me with an eBook as one made of paper. So whichever way the reading world turns in terms of delivery methods – and it’s pretty obvious where things are headed – my reading habit won’t be affected. In fact, the most likely effect will be an increase in the amount of reading I do. I’m not getting any younger, you see, and I feel an ache in hands and wrists when I hold a substantial volume, and it’s ever more common for me to set a book aside because arthritis is having its way with me, and not because I’ve run out of time to read. But all books weigh the same when in a digital format, and a good ereader weighs next to nothing.
The books I currently own will stay where they are; I won’t be replacing many volumes with digital counterparts. Except for a few frequently used references, I can’t see any point. But many new books, especially works of fiction, will come my way in a digital format. I’ve already used the Kindle and Nook reading apps on my laptop to discover new authors, and this process will only accelerate when I have a dedicated ereader. I see myself, in years to come, buying either paper books or eBooks, whatever suits the needs of the moment, and for as long as both exist.
But if paper ever does go the way of the dodo, I’ll still be reading. I’ll be reading eBooks.
Curmudgeons will no doubt read these words (assuming any of them read weblogs online, which come to think of it is rather unlikely) while frowning and shaking their heads. I’ll leave them to it. There’s no point arguing with those who espouse a lost cause, and eBooks are not going to be a “fad” as so many predicted when the Kindle first hit the market. As evidence of this, consider the UofA student union, in which I am typing this entry. Yesterday I strolled through the union and kept a count of people I noticed reading. Those reading something on a laptop only counted if I saw nothing animated on the screen, a small number. I found 58 people reading, and 33 of them were using ereaders of some sort; you really don’t need to do the math to know what those numbers reveal. Of greater interest to me was the fact that readers of print and eBook alike had the same fixed stares of readers everywhere when lost in a story. There was no visible difference between readers of books and eBooks; the experience seemed the same for them, either way. The current generation of eBooks has succeeded because, for those who desire the experience of reading, they ultimately provide exactly the same thing. Being hung up on the superficial aspects, paper crinkling and the scent of ink, often amounts to little more than grasping after rationalizations to hide a knee-jerk reaction to change.
Study history and you will soon learn that it’s the nature of human civilization to change. And when you understand the pervasive nature of social change you realize there are only two ways to react. You can embrace change, work it and direct it and try to mitigate its less savory aspects. Or you can dig in your heels, hit the brakes, and circle the wagons. But history also teaches us that those who simply try to prevent change are eventually swept away and rendered irrelevant. Those who argue against eBooks and ereaders, especially those who try to prove there’s actually something harmful in such things will, with their objections, soon be forgotten. Their point is already moot, as my informal count in the student union yesterday showed. Books in digital form, or whatever eBooks evolve into, will be the way people read in the near future. And since I plan to read in the future, I will read eBooks.
They Had To Start Somewhere Leave a comment
And for the matter at hand, so do I.
It isn’t much of a stretch to compare science fiction fandom’s Hugo Award for Best Novel to Hollywood’s Oscar for Best Picture. Winning the Hugo, in any category, is definitely that sort of big deal. The notoriety an award of such magnitude brings, Oscar or Hugo, can give the work so recognized longevity far beyond the norm for its genre.
This may explain part of the durability of the first novel to ever win the Hugo. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester was that first novel, and being such has almost certainly helped to keep it available through all the decades that have passed since its initial publication. But there’s more to it than that, in this case. The Demolished Man is a classic of the science fiction genre and, in my opinion at least, likely would have achieved that status without winning the award.
I first read The Demolished Man in the mid ‘70s, at a time when I’d just been drawn into science fiction fandom (we just call it fandom) and was focusing my writing time more on fiction than freelance journalism. As I said in a previous entry, I wanted to better understand the genre, and the Hugo winners presented a good theme by which to organize the effort. I started at the beginning with Hugo number one, and over the years that followed read a string of award winners. Years later I find myself walking that same path once more, reading now with older eyes and a more experienced – if not more mature – mind. Once again I’ve started the process with Hugo number one. I don’t recall exactly what I thought about it the first time; it’s been far too many years to say more than I enjoyed the book. This most recent reading, being still fresh in my mind, allows for more specific comments.
The Demolished Man is essentially a futuristic police procedural, set in a world rebuilt from a titanic, possibly nuclear war. (Bester is not specific.) Its main sci-fi idea is that of telepathy. The telepaths in this tale can be found in many walks of life, and are commonplace, if not mainstream. They’ve rendered the world a changed place in many ways, and among other things have made crimes such as murder all but impossible. How do you plan such a crime when there are people in law enforcement who can read your mind? It’s been decades since such a crime has taken place. But there is in this future world a wealthy business tycoon, as mad as he is ruthless, who has figured out a way to pull off the crime of murder. And the murder is, in fact, committed. Up to that point the book is merely a well-written crime thriller, the tale of a psychopath on the loose, set amid the trappings of a time yet to come. After the murder, as the investigation by the telepath for the local police unfolds, things start to change. The chief investigator is as aware of who the murderer is as the reader, but must have more than a glimpse into the mind of the killer to make the charges stick. The trick he must pull off is to provide solid proof in addition to what he’s winkled from the murder’s mind. He needs to prove the usual things, such as means and motive. As he works to do so his personal life intrudes, even as a strange battle of wits unfolds between the telepath and the equally intelligent madman. The book moves steadily away from merely a futuristic crime drama to a different sort of story altogether. Before the end, it takes a different twist that warps its genre definition in yet another direction.
The pacing and character development in this novel are of a quality that this book could still, for all its years, be held up as an example of How It’s Done. The author gives you just enough detail that, with any imagination at all, you can picture for yourself the world he has created. The characters are developed as much by their dialog and actions as by their inner thoughts as revealed by the narrator. Mr. Bester does not over-rely on any one of these to get the job done, and so character development is well-balanced. The pace starts out at a good clip, but at the end the story goes by in a flash. For all of that, the reader is never left behind as the wildest plot twist of all is revealed.
There are a few elements, especially with regard to telepathy, that are introduced a bit too late in the story to avoid seeming somewhat convenient. These items are, however, lent plausibility by what you learn of telepaths in the opening chapters, and so the matter of late introduction did not intrude while I was reading. By that point the story was moving too quickly, and I was too caught up in the tale, to be reading with a truly critical eye. These are the sorts of things that occur to you after the book is done, and you’re writing a review.
It’s abundantly obvious why this book seized the imaginations of sci-fi fans in the ‘50s. This was a fresh, new, and powerfully executed story. The Demolished Man is now considered a classic, and still draws an audience. Unlike its current reviewer, it has aged well. It’s done so, I believe, not so much because of the badge of honor it bears, but because this novel is not firmly attached to the time in which it was written. If you’ve read a fair amount of ‘50s sci-fi, there are elements of this book that you will recognize as products of the time. To the mind of the modern reader the roles of women – and there are few in this book – are a dead giveaway. Beyond what were perhaps inescapable signs of the times, however, Mr. Bester did not make the mistake of using the mannerisms of the times in which he wrote to build his characters and his world, as if the future would simply be a reflection of his day with a few bells and whistles added. The culture he creates for The Demolished Man is largely the product of its own imaginary time, with slang expressions and attitudes that derive nicely from a culture in which telepathy is not only real, but an everyday experience for many people. The characters in the book are recognizably human in their attitudes and motives, but they act out these human things within the context of another time. As a result, you find yourself reading a tale well told, but not a tale of the ‘50s. When someone uses the word “timeless” to describe a work of art, this is what they mean. The Demolished Man has influenced the work of others over the years, and what was a truly surprising ending fifty or more years ago might not be quite such a shock for some readers today. And yet, even here, the cleverness with which Mr. Bester twists his plot is enjoyable, all the same.
I’ve been sparing in details as I discussed The Demolished Man because I don’t want this to be the first of a series of spoiler reviews. My hope is that you’ll take the time and trouble to read this classic work of science fiction for yourself, if you haven’t already. The Demolished Man has surely earned its place among the great books of the genre, just as it deserved its award.
Reading Habits Leave a comment
My desire to write is more than likely a consequence of my print addiction. I learned how to read very early, according to my parents, before I learned to tie my shoes. Whether or not that’s literally the case, I can’t say, but the truth is I’ve been an active, even compulsive reader, for so long now that books often figure in my foggiest early recollections. A love for books and reading was actively encouraged by those who had a hand in raising me, for which I will be forever grateful. And somewhere along the line, also very early in my life, putting words down on paper for myself became the flip side of reading, a natural outgrowth of a love of words and the tricks they can play. Writing and reading were soon of equal importance, and by the time I was half way through middle school I was quite convinced I wanted to be a writer. This side of the coin didn’t receive quite the level of encouragement as reading, however, due to concerns that I might develop “impractical” priorities.
The reading I did in younger days was not especially eclectic, with general science and science fiction making up nearly all the elective reading I did in middle and high school. There were exceptions. Somewhere along the way I was required to read Buck’s The Good Earth, a book that took my imagination to unexpected places. Most of the normal high school reading list left me flat, until I was assigned Moby Dick, a book that both baffled and fascinated me. Late in high school someone introduced me to Will and Ariel Durant, and history joined science on the nonfiction hit parade. And then there was Shakespeare. I had my problems with Elizabethan English, but for some reason was so fascinated by what I read (and saw performed in a couple of cases) that I made the effort. But these really were the exceptions to the rule, and the authors I knew best were the likes of Heinlein, Asimov, Silverberg, and Pohl. I read so much sci-fi as a teenager that the adults around me reacted to it the way some did the idea of kids drinking coffee – that it would stunt my growth, in an intellectual manner of speaking. And in time, the amount of time I spent off by myself reading was itself seen in much the same way, as too much of a good thing.
In hindsight, they clearly had a point. I was rather shy in younger days, and averse to taking risks. These traits, combined with a combination of family issues and the very conservative social environment in which I grew up, conspired to make me something of a late bloomer. Being somewhat behind the curve made it harder for me to fit in – anywhere – something that made me ever more escapist in terms of the reading material I sought. When I started writing science fiction and fantasy it seemed only natural to do so. I practically lived by and for genre fiction, those genres in particular. Attending science fiction conventions and hanging with a crowd with the same fixations reinforced the habit. To say that what I wrote in those days was terribly derivative would have been, at best, an understatement. That I sold absolutely none of that fiction, not a word, is in hindsight not at all hard to understand.
Nothing stays the same, though, another aspect of reality I’ve come to appreciate in a different way over time. I met people in the sci-fi crowd who had one foot firmly planted in the “mundane” world from which I desired to escape. Through friendships made with such people I eventually found myself encouraged to try new things in that mundane world, to approach and embrace it with a bit more courage. When you take a chance and succeed, you are more willing to push yourself a bit further and harder. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if the wins at least give you a sense for facing even odds, you keep at it and keep growing. It becomes a positive feedback loop, an upward spiral, and things really begin to change. You do crazy things, like bicycling the length of Baja California, getting married, and going back to school to earn a degree. You become your own agent of change.
Two things happened to my reading habits as these changes unfolded. I spent more time doing things and less time reading, but at the same time covered a wider range of subjects. Conversations and experiences with a broader range of friends and acquaintances led to the selection of different sorts of reading material. Sci-fi lost its near complete dominance. On the way to the degree I became so caught up by other matters that I nearly stopped reading fiction altogether. Hardly a surprise, I suppose, that I also stopped writing it, although continued lack of sales certainly helped to spill the wind from those sails. Books on history, biography, and science were most likely to stick to my hands in bookstores, with escapist fiction fading to a minor role. I read hard books, works that challenged me, and sometimes confused me. It was a very different escape from the ordinary.
The digital age has brought writing back to dominate my life, these days, and although my first book is nonfiction, I was immediately drawn back to sci-fi. (It felt like going home.) As I’ve worked to develop a credible fictional world I’ve discovered that reading and writing seem to have developed a relationship that inverts the way it was in my youth. Once upon a time reading made me want to write. Now I’m writing science fiction again, and to promote my work I find myself interacting with fans and readers of the genre. They’re talking about books that sound worth reading, and so now writing has led me to read more fiction. It’s a different experience these days, however, and not so much about escaping reality. Reading, which is now the flip side of writing, is informed by a wider range of experience. So is writing. Considering this, I finally understand a comment I heard a long time ago. Live boldly, read boldly, and then write about it.
Under Desert Stars 