Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A New Genre? Slipstream Vs New Wave Fabulism


Recently i've been thinking alot about 'categories' and 'genre' in regards to my writing and that of my favourite books. "The Gargoyle"; "The Book Thief"; "Darkmans"; "Beyond Black"; "Life of Pi"; "The Book of lost things"; "Kafka on the shore"; "Neverwhere"; "American Gods" Often when some one asks about these books, its hard to call them, fantasy/ science fiction/literary because they are both but neither. As Carter Scholz & Bruce Sterling states, there is this new emergent genre:

it is a contemporary kind of writing which has set its face against consensus reality. It is a fantastic, surreal sometimes, speculative on occasion, but not rigorously so. It does not aim to provoke a "sense of wonder" or to systematically extrapolate in the manner of classic science fiction.

Instead, this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the late twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility. We could call this kind of fiction Novels of Postmodern Sensibility, but that looks pretty bad on a category rack, and requires an acronym besides; so for the sake of convenience and argument, we will call these books "slipstream."
He further continues that:

It seems to me that the heart of slipstream is an attitude of peculiar aggression against "reality." These are fantasies of a kind, but not fantasies which are "futuristic" or "beyond the fields we know." These books tend to sarcastically tear at the structure of "everyday life."Some such books, the most "mainstream" ones, are non-realistic literary fictions which avoid or ignore SF genre conventions. But hard-core slipstream has unique darker elements. Quite commonly these works don't make a lot of common sense, and what's more they often somehow imply that *nothing we know makes* "a lot of sense" and perhaps even that *nothing ever could*.

It's very common for slipstream books to screw around with the representational conventions of fiction, pulling annoying little stunts that suggest that the picture is leaking from the frame and may get all over the reader's feet. A few such techniques are infinite regress, trompe-l'oeil effects, metalepsis, sharp violations of viewpoint limits, bizarrely blase' reactions to horrifically unnatural events . . . all the way out to concrete poetry and the deliberate use of gibberish. Think M. C. Escher, and you have a graphic equivalent."
Is this the new wave for the genre of SF/Fantasy?

According to Rosenfield's article slipstream writers in reference to Carter Scholz and Sterlings article (above quoted and below listed) include just about everyone writing fantastic fiction working outside the "Science Fiction and Fantasy" section of the bookstore e.g. Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, Steve Erickson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Phillip Roth

But what of New Wave Fabulism?

"Fabulism," you see, is a term used to describe Magical Realist writings by people who are not Latin.New Wave Fabulism is the term invented by Conjunctions to cast a broader net, to include fantastic writing that simply isn't Magical Realism. In practical terms one wonders what the difference between "New Wave Fabulism" and "Slipstream" really is? Why didn't Conjunctions just call the issue "Slipstream" and be done with it?

The real difference between the terms is an illustration of why we can't declare the tension between those inside and outside the genre finally over and break out the champaign. The term "Slipstream" was created by Bruce Sterling to describe people predominantly outside the genre, but because he himself was inside of it, talking to people inside of it, the term has come to be used primarily by the SF community. "New Wave Fabulism," however, was proposed by a literary magazine to describe people inside the genre, and it is already coming to be used by people in the Literary world as a way to describe SF writers who are, you know, "good," because apparently we can't just call it Speculative Fiction without turning people off. In 2006 an anthology was released with the unwieldy title of Paraspheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction: Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories. In the statement-of-purpose essay from this anthology, editor Ken Keegan reveals:

On several occasions I initially described the work we would be publishing as "speculative fiction," only to receive a response like, "Oh, you mean science (or fantasy, or genre) fiction. I don't read science (or fantasy or genre) fiction. I only read literary fiction."


So essentially Slipstream and New Wave Fabulism are one and the same - a mix of literary and SF and according to Rosenberg's article both sides of this 'new genre' (literary and SF) are breaking out in hives at the thought of mentioning the other genre's existence.

The difference between Literary Fiction and Speculative Fiction is not the content, but the communities, communities which are often wildly ignorant about one another, and more significantly, openly hostile to one another. Which is not to say there aren't exceptions; obviously Bruce Sterling reads Literary Fiction and the editors of Conjunctions read Speculative Fiction. But the very existence of two terms, "Slipstream" and "New Wave Fabulism," to describe something that, if they aren't the same thing, might as well be, highlights the communal divisions even between the people who are most open to crossing their borders.
*sigh* i started this post, excited that i could label my favourite books with a genre name and be able to say i read 'such and such' genre and maybe be able to find more books that are similar. . . Now it sounds like i just walked onto the bookworld version of westside story!?!?!?!


THE SLIPSTREAM LIST - Carter Scholz & Bruce Sterling

ACKER, KATHY - Empire of the Senseless
ACKROYD, PETER - Hawksmoor; Chatterton
ALDISS, BRIAN - Life in the West
ALLENDE, ISABEL - Of Love and Shadows; House of
Spirits
AMIS, KINGSLEY - The Alienation; The Green Man
AMIS, MARTIN - Other People; Einstein's Monsters
APPLE, MAX - Zap; The Oranging of America
ATWOOD, MARGARET - The Handmaids Tale
AUSTER, PAUL - City of Glass; In the Country of Last
Things
BALLARD, J. G. - Day of Creation; Empire of the Sun
BANKS, IAIN - The Wasp Factory; The Bridge
BANVILLE, JOHN - Kepler; Dr. Copernicus
BARNES, JULIAN - Staring at the Sun
BARTH, JOHN - Giles Goat-Boy; Chimera
BARTHELME, DONALD - The Dead Father
BATCHELOR, JOHN CALVIN - Birth of the People s
Republic of Antarctica
BELL, MADISON SMARTT - Waiting for the End of the
World
BERGER, THOMAS - Arthur Rex
BONTLY, THOMAS - Celestial Chess
BOYLE, T. CORAGHESSAN - Worlds End; Water Music
BRANDAO, IGNACIO - And Still the Earth
BURROUGHS, WILLIAM - Place of Dead Roads; Naked Lunch;
Soft Machine; etc.
CARROLL, JONATHAN - Bones of the Moon; Land of Laughs
CARTER, ANGELA - Nights at the Circus; Heroes and
Villains
CARY, PETER - Illywhacker; Oscar and Lucinda
CHESBRO, GEORGE M. - An Affair of Sorcerers
COETZEE, J. M. - Life and rimes of Michael K.
COOVER, ROBERT - The Public Burning; Pricksongs &
Descants
CRACE, JIM - Continent
CROWLEY, JOHN - Little Big; Aegypt
DAVENPORT, GUY - Da Vincis Bicycle; The Jules Verne
Steam Balloon
DISCH, THOMAS M. - On Wings of Song
DODGE, JIM - Not Fade Away
DURRELL, LAWRENCE - Tunc; Nunquam
ELY, DAVID - Seconds
ERICKSON, STEVE - Days Between Stations; Rubicon Beach
FEDERMAN, RAYMOND - The Twofold Variations
FOWLES, JOHN - A Maggot
FRANZEN, JONATHAN - The Twenty-Seventh City
FRISCH, MAX - Homo Faber; Man in the Holocene
FUENTES, CARLOS - Terra Nostra
GADDIS, WILLIAM - JR; Carpenters Gothic
GARDNER, JOHN - Grendel; Freddy's Book
GEARY, PATRICIA - Strange Toys; Living in Ether
GOLDMAN, WILLIAM - The Princess Bride; The Color of
Light
GRASS, GUNTER - The Tin Drum
GRAY, ALASDAIR - Lanark
GRIMWOOD, KEN - Replay
HARBINSON, W. A. - Genesis; Revelation; Otherworld
HILL, CAROLYN - The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer
HJVRTSBERG, WILLIAM - Gray Matters; Falling Angel
HOBAN, RUSSELL - Riddley Walker
HOYT, RICHARD - The Manna Enzyme
IRWIN, ROBERT - The Arabian Nightmares
ISKANDER, FAZIL - Sandro of Chegam; The Gospel
According to Sandro
JOHNSON, DENIS - Fiskadoro
JONES, ROBERT F. - Blood Sport; The Diamond Bogo
KINSELLA, W. P. - Shoeless Joe
KOSTER, R. M. - The Dissertation; Mandragon
KOTZWINKLE, WILLIAM - Elephant Bangs Train; Doctor
Rat, Fata Morgana
KRAMER, KATHRYN - A Handbook for Visitors From Outer
Space
LANGE, OLIVER - Vandenberg
LEONARD, ELMORE - Touch
LESSING, DORIS - The Four-Gated City; The Fifth Child
of Satan
LEVEN, JEREMY - Satan
MAILER, NORMAN - Ancient Evenings
MARINIS, RICK - A Lovely Monster
MARQUEZ, GABRIEL GARCIA - Autumn of the Patriarch; One
Hundred Years of Solitude
MATHEWS, HARRY - The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
McEWAN, IAN - The Comfort of Strangers; The Child in
Time
McMAHON, THOMAS - Loving Little Egypt
MILLAR, MARTIN - Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation
MOONEY, TED - Easy Travel to Other Planets
MOORCOCK, MICHAEL - Laughter of Carthage; Byzantium
Endures; Mother London
MOORE, BRIAN - Cold Heaven
MORRELL, DAVID - The Totem
MORRISON, TONI - Beloved; The Song of Solomon
NUNN, KEN - Tapping the Source; Unassigned Territory
PERCY, WALKER - Love in the Ruins; The Thanatos
Syndrome
PIERCY, MARGE - Woman on the Edge of Time
PORTIS, CHARLES - Masters of Atlantis
PRIEST, CHRISTOPHER - The Glamour; The Affirmation
PROSE, FRANCINE - Bigfoot Dreams, Marie Laveau
PYNCHON, THOMAS - Gravity's Rainbow; V; The Crying of
Lot 49
REED, ISHMAEL - Mumbo Jumbo; The Terrible Twos
RICE, ANNE - The Vampire Lestat; Queen of the Damned
ROBBINS, TOM - Jitterbug Perfume; Another Roadside
Attraction
ROTH, PHILIP - The Counterlife
RUSHDIE, SALMON - Midnight's Children; Grimus; The
Satanic Verses
SAINT, H. F. - Memoirs of an Invisible Man
SCHOLZ, CARTER & HARCOURT GLENN - Palimpsests
SHEPARD, LUCIUS - Life During Wartime
SIDDONS, ANNE RIVERS - The House Next Door
SPARK, MURIEL - The Hothouse by the East River
SPENCER, SCOTT - Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball
SUKENICK, RONALD - Up; Down; Out
SUSKIND, PATRICK - Perfume
THEROUX, PAUL - O-Zone
THOMAS, D. M. - The White Hotel
THOMPSON, JOYCE - The Blue Chair; Conscience Place
THOMSON, RUPERT - Dreams of Leaving
THORNBERG, NEWTON - Valhalla
THORNTON, LAWRENCE - Imagining Argentina
UPDIKE, JOHN - Witches of Eastwick; Rogers Version
VLIET, R. G. - Scorpio Rising
VOLLMAN, WILLIAM T. - You Bright and Risen Angels
VONNEGUT, KURT - Galapagos; Slaughterhouse-Five
WALLACE, DAVID FOSTER - The Broom of the System
WEBB, DON - Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book
WHITTEMORE, EDWARD - Nile Shadows; Jerusalem Poker;
Sinai Tapestry
WILLARD, NANCY - Things Invisible to See
WOMACK, JACK - Ambient; Terraplane
WOOD, BARI - The Killing Gift
WRIGHT, STEPHEN - M31: A Family Romance

Slipstream/cyberpunk book reviews


Monday, June 29, 2009

John D McDonald: A Million Words

I wrote this over on my personal blog, but i thought it would be suitable for here too. Take my advice and drop by 'why new novelists are kinda old' - really excellent post.

I've read almost all the comments on the post "why new novelists are kinda old" both the post and comments are excellent - real food for thought, especially in regards to the potter analogy (you wouldn't expect a masterpiece the first time you approach a potters wheel) and the lifetimes outlines. Also though in the comment section was John D Mcdonald's quote (taken from Elmore Leonards blog

John D. McDonald said that you had to write a million words before you really knew what you were doing. A million words is ten years. By that time you should have a definite idea of what you want your writing to sound like. That’s the main thing. I don’t think many writers today begin with that goal: to write a certain way that has a definite sound to it.
Malcolm Gladwell also stated:

it takes 10 000 hours of practise to get good at anything (about five years of eight hour days, or considerably longer if you’re doing it around your day job, rather than as your day job).
So moral of the lesson from reading this post - i'm 22 and i've 1 million words to go :)


Saturday, June 27, 2009

WC Blog Roll!

Many of you know that this blog is connected to a writer's forum, well i got an idea from absolute.com about a members blog roll.

Essentially people who want to have their blog added to the WC members blogroll, leave a message with your blog and name and i'll add you to it.

The only rule is that you must post the blogroll onto your own blog, or your blog will be removed (its just a way to make sure we all get equal advertising etc.)

Heres the code so far (remove the * symbols) : I will continuously edit when i get new blogs :)

<*marquee
onmouseout="this.start()" direction="up" width="250" onmouseover="this.stop()" loop="true" scrollamount="2" height="130">
<*a href*="http://annerallen.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Anne's Blog
<*a href*="http://thechroniclesofemilycross.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Emily's Blog
<*a href*="http://write-ideas14.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">ReNu's Blog
<*/*marquee>


Thursday, June 25, 2009

TwitteRevolution


Some interesting headlines surrounding the world of Twitter-ville

Twitterature

Is there no end to Twittermania? Last week we saw the social networking tool Twitter deployed on the streets of Tehran. This week, moving seamlessly from the sublime to the ridiculous, it is being used to aid the digestion of the world's greatest literature.

Fans of the classics will either be delighted or appalled to learn that the New York-branch of Penguin books has commissioned a new volume that will put great works through the Twitter mangle. The volume has a working title that will make the nerve ends of purists jangle: Twitterature.

In it, the authors will squish the jewels of world literature - they mention Dante, Shakespeare, Stendhal, Joyce and JK Rowling - into 20 tweets or less - that is 20 sentences each with fewer than 140 characters. READ MORE HERE


Libraries Tap into Twitter

Libraries throughout the UK are testing the waters of Twitter as a way to both engage with their readers and dispel their image as fusty, silent enclaves staffed by old-fashioned introverts.

At the British Library (@britishlibrary), they're talking about riding on John Berger's motorbike; "about as good as it gets I think". Aberdeenshire's libraries (@onceuponashire) are recommending books – "Katherine by Anya Seton is a great romp through the 14th century, well worth a read" – while the John Rylands University of Manchester library (@jrul) informs us that it has just made a 14th century cookbook available online, complete with recipes for porpoise, pike and blancmange. Read More here


Wednesday, June 10, 2009

US Justice Department begins to ask questions about Google deal

According the Bookseller the US Justice Department has sent formal demands to Google Inc and publishers, including Hachette US, for information about the Google Settlement, in a move that it has been suggested could further stall the deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the civil investigative demands, or CIDs, are the strongest sign yet that the Justice Department may seek to block or force a renegotiation of the Settlement, which was struck last year between Google, US authors and US publishers. "It's also an indication of the more intense antitrust scrutiny promised by the Obama administration."

According to Bloomberg, the Authors Guild, which was part of the Settlement received a civil investigative demand from the agency last week. Hachette Book Group also received a formal request for information from the Justice Department.


Additionally The European Commission has also confirmed that it was to launch an inquiry into Google's mass digitisation, to see whether the European Union should protect authors and publishers.


Read more about this here


For those who are revising . . .

Thought that those of us who are at the revision stage might find this checklist on Nathan's Blog useful. I've also included the below list, which has been sitting on my computer since the dawn of time. God only knows where i picked it up - hope it helps!

Put your manuscript away for at least a couple of weeks, then read it right through, asking:

• Have you kept the spotlight on your basic theme and main characters? Sub-plots and minor characters should not overshadow these.

• Have you developed your characters fully, portraying them through their actions, reactions and interactions, and keeping them 'in character' throughout? Don't let them act out of character without a good reason.

• Has your protagonist changed (or been changed) by the end? A main character who neither changes nor grows in some meaningful way between the first and last pages will be static and unconvincing.

• Is your story logical? Even a fantasy needs to make sense within its own terms.

• Does the story maintain a satisfactory 'cause and effect' sequence, with each event following on logically from what has gone - before? A plot that relies on coincidence, for example, or the convenient arrival of a new character, will strain your reader's credulity. Coincidences do happen in real life, but they're seldom convincing in fiction.

• Have you kept control of your chosen narrative voice (or voices) throughout? Check for unintentional switches or slips of viewpoint?

• Does every scene take the action forward, enrich characterisation, increase tension, or provide a calming or reflective interlude? If it does none of these, ask yourself why it's there. Could it be cut without harming the story?

• Check every piece of dialogue - is it 'in character'? Does it contribute to characterisation and/or move the story forward?

• Have you been sparing with description and explanation, leaving room for your reader's imagination to come into play?

• Is the writing strong, evoking all the senses? Have you used passive voice where active voice would work better? Have you used 'to be' verbs supported by adverbs where strong verbs alone would be more effective? Flabby writing can dull the impact of the most brilliant story.

• Look again at the story as a whole. Is the structure balanced? Have you begun in the right place? Don't jeopardise your chances by starting the story too early, providing too much background and taking too long to get things moving. Many a story has been saved by cutting out the first chapter and plunging straight into the action.

• Have you sustained momentum through the middle section, moving the story on through cause and effect, action and reaction, tightening tension as you build to the climax?

• Have you left your reader feeling satisfied that the whole story has been told? Make sure you haven't left any unintentional loose ends.

• Are you absolutely sure your novel is as good as you can make it?


Monday, June 8, 2009

The New Look

So i played around a little with the format and that, what do you think? I'll try and change font colours to coincide better with the forum.


Headlines: 8th June

Slumgirl Rubina Ali's Story to be Published

Transworld has bought world English rights in the life story of Rubina Ali, nine-year-old star of "Slumdog Millionaire". Slumgirl Dreaming: My Journey to the Stars will be published simultaneously in adult and children's editions from Transworld's Black Swan imprint and Random House Children's
Books' Bantam imprint, (both £6,99, 16th July).

The rapidly evolving world of digital books is presenting new
challenges - Authors are ready to throw the book and online pirates.

FEEL like reading Australian author Colleen McCullough's Thorn Birds, but don't want to pay for a copy?

Then just hop onto a site like Wattpad.com and the book is available free as an electronic download. While this might be a bonus for readers, it is a disaster for authors, who get no royalties from the downloads. Read more here . . .


Also of interest in this article is the discussion is that last month, Scribd, a Silicon Valley start-up, announced plans to morph itself from a document-sharing website into a vanity publisher, which plans to set up a new store to allow authors to publish their works and set their own price, in an arrangement that will allow authors to keep 80 per cent of the revenue.

Google is offering more than 60 per cent, which will pose a real challenge to the traditional publishing industry standard of 20 per cent royalties to writers.



Any thoughts on whether this is the future of the publishing industry?


Friday, June 5, 2009

Headlines: 5th June

David Eddings Dies

Bestselling fantasy author David Eddings, who wrote The Belgariad and the Malloreon series, has died aged 77. Read More . . .

Publisher Strikes back at Salinger Lawsuit

The Sweden-based publisher behind the unauthorised sequel to J D Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye has described the author's attempt to oppose publication of the book as "ludicrous". Read more . . .

Authors Call for Better PLR guidance for new authors

Novelists Jon McGregor and Danny Scheinmann have called for better guidance for first-time authors about the need to register for Public Lending Right, after missing out on payments due to them for their library loans. It follows the revelation last week that Tim Butcher received no PLR payments for Blood River (Chatto), the most borrowed travel title in 2007/08, because he was unregistered. Read more . . .

P.S. PLR - will be a future topic on this blog.