Intelligent Science Fiction

Warning: This post contains spoilers about the books Who Goes There? I Am Legend and The Hunger Games.

What is it about science fiction that gives this particular genre such a broad appeal? If you look at Hollywood you’d be tempted to think it was the visual sensation of blockbusting special effects, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the reliance of movies on mind-bending special effects has diluted rather than enhanced great science fiction stories.

Science fiction has such a strong appeal because it is intelligent, it stimulates our thinking. And, often times, this distinction is lost when books morph into movies.

In Who Goes There? John Campbell introduces us to a creature Hollywood immortalized as The Thing. Although the movie is a vivid and faithful rendition of this novella, it misses a significant amount of the reasoning the scientists go through as both they and the readers struggle to comprehend what they’re dealing with. And that is where the brilliance of the story lies, in the exploratory, inquisitive, reasoning nature of man. The essence of the story is, how can reason triumph over a mindless monster, one than can perfectly mimic its target? Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie, but the way the scientists reason through the nature of this alien beast in the novella is brilliant, and it is lost in the screen adaptation. They consider the biological nature of what they’ve run into, they think about how the infection spreads at a cellular level, realizing that the infected cow would have laced their milk with parasitic spores. They discuss why the alien won’t engage in open combat with them, realizing that it has evolved a unique strategy to avoid such confrontations, and they come to the chilling realization that it would sweep unopposed throughout the world if even the smallest biological trace remains. As a reader, you feel like an unnamed member of the ice station, traveling with them on this doomed voyage.

In the same way, I Am Legend, takes an absurd, mythological notion and says, what of it were true? How could vampires exist in a modern world? The protagonist, Neville, talks us through the logic of vampires fearing the cross, but not because of any inherent supernatural power in that shape, it turns out that the shape is a vivid reminder for vampires, causing a physiological revulsion of what they’ve become. In the same way, mirrors allow them to see themselves for what they really are, and they are repulsed by the realization that they are monsters. Neville even notes that vampires of Jewish origin would suffer the same aversion to the Star of David as former Christians would of the cross. Garlic, rather than an old wives’ fable, becomes a biological agent that causes anaphylactic shock. Sunlight, it seems, breaks down the vampiric bacteria, just as UV is known to destroy other types of bacteria. In the course of the story, the question is raised, why do stakes kill vampires and not bullets? Neville, our rational hero, applying science over superstition, learns that the hemorrhaging caused by a stake cannot be contained as easily as the smaller holes caused by a bullet. And the reader finds themselves inhabiting a world where the absurd has suddenly become plausible and rational, at least in a fictitious sense in which disbelief can be suspended for the enjoyment of the adventure.

The Hunger Games is another recent example. The movie is breathtaking, but action and adventure win out over the awe of reason. In the movie, we see Katness attack the supplies of the upper crust contestants, but without the audience really understanding why. In the book, however, we get a sense of the hunger and desperation Katness suffers in the wilderness. Rather than a mindless attack on the stores of the wealthy tributes, we see Katness attack the stores to level the playing field, to square up the fight and ensure that the rich kids also need to scavenge and forage for basic necessities. In this way, they can no longer ruthlessly hunt down the other tributes with such ease. And so the book allows us to explore this fictional world with Katness, and to understand its means and motives in a way that is glossed over in the movie.

As a science fiction author, I appreciate what these authors have done, they’ve started with a simple premise and explored the possibilities latent therein, seeking to build fictional worlds for our enjoyment. It is said that the plot is the character in action. When it comes to science fiction, the plot is the character interacting with science in a way that influences both their actions and the actions of their opponents.

 

Sherlock

It’s not science, it’s not science fiction, so technically it doesn’t belong on this blog, but, damn… if you haven’t seen the BBC TV production Sherlock, you’ve missed out on some brilliant entertainment. Forget such pretenders as CSI: {Insert name of major US city here} or even Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, this is the real story of Sherlock Holmes.

Although the movie, A Game of Shadows, comes in at a respectable 7.7 within the International Movie Data Base, the TV series eclipses this with a sublime 9.1 rating, and I’d say 9.1 was a bit harsh

With great restraint, I will avoid any spoilers and simply say that episodes like A Scandal in Belgravia will go down historically as being better than some of the original stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

One of the nice things about the BBC is they’re not afraid to take a gamble on proven writers, and so Steven Moffatt, one of the principle writers for Dr Who, and Mark Gatiss, a Dr Who contributor, were given free hand to craft a TV series that is going to be one of the classics in years to come. With only three episodes in a season, and each episode being 90 minutes long, they’ve thrown out the formulaic rule-book that governs so much television, particularly in the US, and come up with a format that allows them to craft some brilliant stories. As tormenting as it is to be limited to only three shows a season, the quality of the writing is superb. Moffatt and Gatiss have avoided the temptation to exploit the name and commercialize the series, staying true to form they have delivered a TV show worthy of representing the works of Doyle, and lending credit to the Sherlock Holmes franchise.

Bravo. Ten stars from me on the IMDB.

PS. Among others, Moffatt wrote the Dr Who episodes The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink.

 

Diverting the Amazon

The Amazon is the largest, but not the longest, river in the world, with an average water-flow greater than the next seven rivers combined. Its width varies from a mile across to six miles. During the wet season, it expands to roughly thirty miles in width, with its estuary emptying into the Atlantic across a broad front a hundred and fifty miles wide. How appropriate, then, that Jeff Bezos named his e-commerce company, with it’s various tributaries and its sheer volume, Amazon.

As an independent author, Amazon has given me, and countless others, a unique opportunity to explore the deep, dark forests of the publishing world in a way that couldn’t be dreamt of a few years ago. In the midst of this, the 99c e-book market has arisen as a niche category, a bargain bin in the basement, something from which readers can take a punt on new/emerging authors (like myself) with dubious literary ability (again, like myself). This is, quite serendipitously, a mirror of the cheap pulp fiction of the 1930-1960s that spawned the science fiction genre.

Most, if not all, of the great science fiction authors like Clarke, Heinlein, Dick and Asimov had their origins in the cheap paperbacks of this era, so there’s hope for me yet. I can’t help but wonder if, with the advent of electronic self-publishing, we are on the cusp of another era of great science fiction. Maybe, maybe not, as the ease of publishing has also led to a lot of electronic pulp, making it hard to separate the chaff from the wheat.

Enter Hugh Howey, the man who diverted the course of the Amazon. The 99c price bracket continues to be a launching point for budding authors, like myself, but it is saturated by trash pulp, some would say my trash pulp, but it is hard to find the gold nuggets. For example, consider these comments selected at random from some of the more questionable entries in the Top 10 Hard Science Fiction e-Books.

…the book quickly descends into moronic drudgery…
…Five star reviews? Amazing. Did they read the same book?
…I wish I’d read something else.
…reads like a massively annoying list of trite sayings strung together with pronouns and adverbs

So how do you distinguish the good from the bad, the great read from the grammatical nightmare? Reviews, themselves, are quite subjective and, it seems, easily distorted if you have 25 friends with Amazon accounts willing to lend you five stars a piece.*

The 99c e-Book pulp fiction represents an interesting dilemma for an author. Amazon pays lousy commissions in this bracket to encourage higher prices, but moving a new book to 2.99 or 3.99 takes it outside of the bargain bin and into obscurity. So the question facing budding authors is, sell your book for peanuts and enter competition with pulp that, in some cases, is a poor substitute for spam in your inbox, or price your unknown work out of the market?

And this is where Hugh Howey had a stroke of genius. He has effectively redefined the 99c price point, reinventing it as the region of high-quality short stories/novellas. His Wool series is essentially a series of related short stories, longer than chapters, but not full books in their own right. They are a return to the spirit of pulp fiction in the 1950s, engaging stories that can be read in a single setting and continued if the reader chooses to buy the next one in the series. Howey has been criticised for short-changing readers, as he doesn’t describe these books as novellas with roughly 20-25,000 words a piece, but he points out that if someone purchases all five novellas they will have spent 4.95 on 100,000 words, a fair price by anyone’s estimate. How much would you pay for a cup of coffee? How much would you pay to rent a Blu-ray for the night? Or to go to the movies to see a new release? (You need a second mortgage to finance a family outing to the cinemas in Australia) Yeah, it puts a 99c e-book in a very favourable light.

What Mr Howey doesn’t point out is that this approach is not advantageous to him, it is something that is advantageous to the readers. The reader starts with a low-cost appetiser. If they don’t like the amuse-bouche, they’ve reached a natural end to the story without wading through 100,000 words, and saved themselves four dollars. I’d be interested to know Mr Howey’s stats on Wool purchases as it would be fascinating to know how many people go on to buy successive editions.

In both scenarios, selling Wool in a series or compiled into a book, the cost to the reader is 4.95. But for Mr Howey, there is a significant difference in commission, 35% or 70%, so he is clearly putting the reader’s interests before his own.

And he’s given himself the time and space to grow as a writer. The stories improved in quality, characterisation and plot as the series progresses. Take a look at the reader ratings for the Wool series.

• Wool 1 Avg 4.6 stars over 90 reviews, only 2 one star reviews
• Wool 2 Avg 4.8 stars over 27 reviews, no one star reviews
• Wool 3 Avg 4.9 stars over 18 reviews, nothing below four stars
• Wool 4 Avg 5.0 stars over 18 reviews (some duplicated reviewers from Wool 4 but not all of them)
• Wool 5 Yet to be released

Now, this is not to say Wool is perfect, far from it. I picked up a minor blemish today in Wool 3. Will Wool get more one star reviews over time, without a doubt, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but, damn, these are dream stats.

As a writer that’s been harshly criticised for lacking depth, I find the focus on a series of high-quality short stories intriguing. And so, in the spirit of exploration and experimentation that has underpinned my writing with Amazon, I’ve come up with Serengeti using the same concept. Serengeti is the first of five stand-alone short stories in which I’ve focused on the quality of writing, the quality of characterisation and dramatisation over simply trying to pump out 100,000 words to compete with the deadheads in the trash pulp section.

My prediction for the future? The great science fiction writers of this century will come from the high-quality shorts in the 99c bargain bin on Amazon.

Thank you, Mr Howey, for carving out a niche for a series of high-quality novellas and changing the course of the river.

*  In the interests of transparency, two of my friends offered initial reviews of Anomaly, one of whom rated the book with four stars. This review continues to be a popular, judged relevant by a decent number of unknown readers. Both reviews are clearly labelled as being from friends. Also, in the interests of fairness, one of the negative comments above is from one of my one star reviews (ouch).

* Update: Hugh contacted me and let me know that the follow-through rate of readers purchasing Wool 1 – 5 appears to be around 95-98% so there’s a lot of satisfied Wool readers out there.

 

One Star

Every writer wants five stars reviews of their novel, and understandably so, but those one stars can be quite insightful and are well worth playing close attention to as a novelist.

I recently finished reading Max Brooks World War Z and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, it’s not Hemingway, but it’s a bloody good read (if you’ll pardon the pun). Max has an astounding 971 reviews, 597 of which are five stars, and then there’s the 46 one star reviews.

The one stars are quite varied. Some people were clearly hoping for more blood and guts, others felt the characters were one dimensional, while others felt it was a good idea, poorly executed (did they read the same book I did?). One astute reviewer labelled it “Yawn of the Dead,” which I think would have brought a smile to Max’s face, whether he agreed with it or not. But the common theme through all these reviews is that he needed a more convincing change of narrative when switching between characters. I’ve been criticised for a similar lack of depth in characterisation so there’s something in that both Max and I can learn from.

Another classic example of this is Ender’s Game, a science fiction novel I thoroughly enjoyed, and the twist got me hook, line and sinker. With well over 2900 reviews and a phenomenal 2300 five star reviews, you’d wonder how anyone could find fault with the book, and yet there are 79 one star reviews. And there’s a lot Orson Scott Card and I and anyone else who’d cares to look can learn from these reviews. Particularly, the review by Arteminism.

Very disturbed by central themes
I find it hard to understand how people cannot notice the deep themes of child abuse that run through this novel. From the struggle within Ender (the abused) to avoid becoming Peter (his first abuser), to “Uncle Graf” isolating Ender by removing him first from the protection of his family and then from friendships with his peers…

Graff… plans to convince Ender that no matter what, no adult will ever come to his rescue. Interestingly, Graff is later prosecuted for his treatment of these boys; he is fully acquitted and offered a promotion.

There are a bunch of comments associated with this review that suggest the reviewer “doesn’t get it.” Oh, he/she gets it all right, better than we do, as he/she is able to clearly separate the appeal of fiction and the suspension of disbelief from reality.

Graf’s comment, that no adult will ever come to Ender’s aid, is chillingly similar to the ploy invoked by paedophiles to control and contain their victims in a state of helplessness. And as for fully acquitted and promoted, well, that too is (unfortunately) all too true of child abusers in our world. I don’t think the author realised quite what he was unveiling.

The reviewer finds it hard to understand how people cannot notice the deep themes of abuse in this novel. And that is a valid point. I find it hard to understand how I could overlook something so obvious until it was pointed out to me in this particular review. In hindsight, I was aware of a sense of distaste at what unfolded, but I suspended that for the sake of the story.

The term for this is selective attention (or it’s counterpoint, selective blindness). We tend to become so engrossed in something we enjoy that we drop our guard mentally and morally, and so we’ll watch the movie Die Hard or Saving Private Ryan or Lord of the Rings without batting an eyelid at the horrific waste of life that occurs in these appalling battles, so long as the heroes are safe.

In Ender’s case, we see all that he endures as his rite of passage and we lose sight of the reality of how brutal and abusive the novel actually is, making this review an astute observation.

So far, my novel Anomaly has dodged one star reviews, although you wouldn’t know it from the tone of some of the comments.

Not just juvenile: actually puerile
…paper-thin and sickeningly sweet… it was so mercifully short

Science fiction or political, moral and religious lecture
…the story line as a science fiction work is weak, unfulfilled, and lacking depth… The writing was a bit too simplistic also; it felt pedestrian. Relationships were rushed and unnatural… I would rate it “Pleasurable-not memorable”

Ouch!

But, as a writer, these comments help to temper the natural enthusiasm and excitement there is in receiving positive reviews. They give me some direction, areas to work upon and address in future novels.

One star reviews… they’re not all that bad as there’s always more to learn

Update 15/11 – Opps.., there it is… one star to lighten my day. BTW, I’ve update the book with US English and US terminology.

Update 21/11 – And the floodgates have opened with ones and twos coming in droves. I once read an autobiography of a special forces soldier who, on parachuting into a combat zone in the dark, crashed into a tree. He noted that the sting of a branch, lashing against his face, gave him a sense of being alive. I know what he means.