Unnatural History: a review of reviews (no spoilers)
Henry Potts
the wrong train, lost as I was in the fiction. I think that means it's a
good book. :)
I've only just started "UH", so I shouldn't really be commenting, but I
was reading some of the discussion about the book on r.a.dw. today and
some thoughts struck me. Those critical of the book still, for the most
part, commend the writing style and how the book was put together. It is
not the mechanics of the writing that are being criticised, but the
strategic direction. "UH" does what it intended to do, but some people
don't like its intentions.
I sympathise with that position. I think Kate & Jon's past two books,
("Vampire Science", "Seeing I") are well written -- and I sometimes
think "SI" is the best 8DA to date -- but I also disagree with the
directions they each took. As I said, I've only just begun "UH", but
there's already a couple of points where I disagree with what Kate & Jon
are doing in the book.
The point I'd like to make here is how wonderful it is to be able to say
that again! Too many of the BBC Books have simply been badly written. By
the time you've waded through the leaden prose or mangled plot -- or
spent an hour trying to see if there are some pages stuck together
because the book doesn't seem to have an ending (calling Mr Leonard) --
you're too disillusioned to worry about whether the book's scheme was
any good. (Most of them don't have any scheme beyond trad trad trad
anyway.)
I don't mind disagreeing with what an author wants to do as long as the
author has the skill to achieve what they are attempting. It means I can
enjoy the book and then come here and enjoy the discussion! I look back
on "The Scarlet Empress" or "Alien Bodies" and I have some qualms about
the direction of their agendas too, but I certainly enjoyed reading
them.
I am looking forward to the rest of "UH" and when I finish, and quite
possibly before, I may well be bewailing what Jon & Kate have done to
the Doctor/Sam/Fitz/the TARDIS/the SPOILER PROTECTION and the SPOILER
PROTECTION, but it's lovely to have a book where I actually care about
all that, which I can't really say about "Legacy of the Daleks" or "The
Bodysnatchers" or "Dreamstone Moon" or "Matrix" or "The Wages of Sin"
or...
--
Henry
Kafenken
> Those critical of the book still, for the most part, commend
> the writing style and how the book was put together.
Except me.
> It is not the mechanics of the writing that are being criticised,
> but the strategic direction. "UH" does what it intended to do,
> but some people don't like its intentions.
On the contrary, I think Unnatural History misses the mark in several major
ways. I've gone into detail in my own review, so I won't bore you all here...
but I will point out that had it been written in a dreamily poetic style of
high fantasy, it would have been an absolute triumph.
That genre can get away with slack plotting, since that's not what it's
interested in. Some of the ideas in this book are awesome, but their prosaic
presentation means that the reader's emotions aren't engaged.
Finn Clark.
William December Starr
jb...@zipper.zip.com.au (Jonathan Blum) said:
> I certainly don't consider myself an expert in such matters, but
> from what I understand one of the hallmarks of magic realism _is_
> that the fantastical events are presented in a deliberately prosaic,
> down-to-earth way rather than a high-fantasy one. You need the
> (comparative) realism of the setting and characters to make the
> magic remarkable.
[ *snip* ]
> It's actually kind of tricky to integrate this style into Who. Most
> magic realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the
> fantastic occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part...
I consider myself far less of an expert on this than you, but I'd had
the impression that this was a hallmark of _all_ magic realism.
Perhaps you (and/or Kate) can help me out with a definition of what
"magic realism" means?
-- William December Starr <wds...@crl.com>
Jonathan Blum
Kafenken <kafe...@aol.com> wrote:
>On the contrary, I think Unnatural History misses the mark in several major
>ways. I've gone into detail in my own review, so I won't bore you all here...
>but I will point out that had it been written in a dreamily poetic style of
>high fantasy, it would have been an absolute triumph.
>That genre can get away with slack plotting, since that's not what it's
>interested in. Some of the ideas in this book are awesome, but their prosaic
>presentation means that the reader's emotions aren't engaged.
I really don't want to argue back against a review here, but this comment
(and the one in your main review) does puzzle me a bit. You wrote in that
review that you thought we didn't seem to realize we were straying into
magic-realism territory, because our presentation of these fantastic
events was pretty prosaic.
I certainly don't consider myself an expert in such matters, but from what
I understand one of the hallmarks of magic realism _is_ that the
fantastical events are presented in a deliberately prosaic, down-to-earth
way rather than a high-fantasy one. You need the (comparative) realism of
the setting and characters to make the magic remarkable. You could tell a
high-fantasy story about an angel falling to earth and being kept in a
cage on display in a village, but what makes Marquez's "A Very Old Man
With Enormous Wings" so effective is that's it's such a grubby little
village, and a rather grubby little angel as well.
It's actually kind of tricky to integrate this style into Who. Most magic
realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the fantastic
occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part... while Who tends
to portray such things as shocking intrusions on a real-world setting.
Yetis on the loo in Tooting Bec and so forth. (On the other hand, the
main characters of the series are a fairly experienced group of
yeti-in-loo-finders, for whom this _is_ part of their usual lifestyle.)
So in that respect "Unnatural History" doesn't take a pure magic-realist
approach, but the influence was definitely there. The prose style was one
way we tried to reinforce the everydayness of the oddity. San Francisco
is an environment where these things are taken for granted, even if Sam
comes from a more conventionally grounded state of mind.
And it's also part of the magic-realist influence that we showed Sam
reacting to surreal, often violent events in a down-to-earth fashion...
the idea of that style is to make the prosaicness heighten the reality,
and thus connect more effectively with the readers' emotions. Sam has to
react like someone who's been violently mugged several times in
succession, regardless of the fact that one of those times the mugger was
a starving (SPOILER).
I'm not sure whether we pulled this experiment off; some people really
dislike the style, others love it. (Myself, I just wish I'd had the time
and energy for another complete pass over the prose.) But I guess I just
wanted to explain that the style was a deliberate decision for effect,
rather than an accident.
Regards,
Jon Blum
Kafenken
> I really don't want to argue back against a review here,
I wish you'd do it more often! Obviously you've got to be careful when you do
it - no point jumping on some poor newbie - but authors generally have
interesting things to say about their own books. For me, it gets annoying when
authors stay unnaturally silent. "Oh, they're trying not to look bad in front
of everyone... gits."
> You wrote in that review that you thought we didn't seem to
> realize we were straying into magic-realism territory, because
> our presentation of these fantastic events was pretty prosaic.
I'm not an expert on magic realism as a genre and it's quite possible that I
used the wrong terminology. In this second comment (the one to which you
actually replied), I wrote:
>> a dreamily poetic style of high fantasy,
which I think is nearer what I meant, judging by your reply:
> I certainly don't consider myself an expert in such matters,
> but from what I understand one of the hallmarks of magic
> realism _is_ that the fantastical events are presented in a
> deliberately prosaic, down-to-earth way rather than a
> high-fantasy one. You need the (comparative) realism of
> the setting and characters to make the magic remarkable.
Gotcha.
> It's actually kind of tricky to integrate this style into Who.
Magic unrealism? :-)
A magic realist novel would be realistic if you took out the magical elements;
they change the reader's expectations. Doctor Who doesn't have that
underpinning of verisimilitude. Our default state is SF adventure, in which
little green men invade England every Shrove Tuesday and the lead character
travels through time in a magic cabinet.
Thus to see weird and wonderful things does nothing to change the reader's
expectations of a Doctor Who story. They're still going to judge it as an SF
adventure unless you change your approach, like Paul Magrs did in The Scarlet
Empress.
With Unnatural History, you had the option of doing a Magrs and carrying us
away on wings of poetry - which IMO would have worked far better. So your
plotting is dodgy? The Scarlet Empress has almost no plot at all, but by
moving to a fantasy genre it transcends this.
> The prose style was one way we tried to reinforce the
> everydayness of the oddity. San Francisco is an environment
> where these things are taken for granted, even if Sam comes
> from a more conventionally grounded state of mind.
Unfortunately, making the odd look ordinary in Doctor Who just makes it look
ordinary. The effect is to downplay what could have been one of the strengths
of your book.
I accept that this was a conscious decision on your part, but I think it was
also a missed opportunity.
SPOILER SPACE
I think your approach also undercuts one of your themes.
With the Doctor, you claim that a contradictory past is more interesting than a
cut-and-dried one.
If you'd been going for a magical approach to the book, then you could have
taken this opportunity to present the Doctor as a magical character and really
blow your readers away. With a prosaic approach, your reader's natural
reaction is to go, "Yeah, but it's still contradictory!"
Finn Clark.
M. Wesley Osam
> Most magic
> realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the fantastic
> occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part...
In fact, this is a characterisitic of all fantasy. If a
world is the kind of place where fantastic things happen,
then they're inevitably going to seem a lot less fantastic
to the inhabitants than they will to their real-world
audience.
To paraphrase something Lawrence Watt-Evans said somewhere
on his website, if someone lives in a world where one can
conjure up demons, then he's not going to be terribly
surprised when he sees demons being conjured.
--
Wesley Osam "I'm sorry. I thought you were all timeless
wo...@avalon.net beings of unlimited evil, and I'd come here
to defeat you."
http://www.avalon.net/~wosam --Lawrence Miles, _Alien Bodies_
Kate Orman
Kafenken <kafe...@aol.com> wrote:
>For me, it gets annoying when authors stay unnaturally silent. "Oh,
>they're trying not to look bad in front of everyone... gits."
Got it in one. Talking back to reviewers is a classic way for authors to
make themselves look like arses. :-) Better to try and graciously accept
criticism, even if you don't take it all on board.
I also worried about the chilling effect it might have on people
discussing the books - people keeping their thoughts to themselves because
they don't want to get stomped on by the authors, or even just because
they don't want to upset us.
--
Kate Blum Orman <kor...@zip.com.au> http://www.ocs.mq.edu.au/~korman/
"I have no idea what that meant." - Dot Warner
Kate Orman
M. Wesley Osam <wo...@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net> wrote:
>In article <7jcjk7$mht$1...@the-fly.zip.com.au>, jb...@zipper.zip.com.au
>(Jonathan Blum) wrote:
>> Most magic
>> realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the fantastic
>> occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part...
>In fact, this is a characterisitic of all fantasy. If a
>world is the kind of place where fantastic things happen,
>then they're inevitably going to seem a lot less fantastic
>to the inhabitants than they will to their real-world
>audience.
True, but from what I've read, magic realist stories are set in the
real-world audience's real world. Despite that, the characters still react
to fantastic, unreal events as though they were a bottle of milk or a car
crash.
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
kor...@zipper.zip.com.au (Kate Orman) wrote:
> In article <wosam-06069...@v90-28.ic.avalon.net>,
> M. Wesley Osam <wo...@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net> wrote:
> >In article <7jcjk7$mht$1...@the-fly.zip.com.au>, jb...@zipper.zip.com.au
> >(Jonathan Blum) wrote:
>
> >> Most magic
> >> realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the
fantastic
> >> occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part...
>
> >In fact, this is a characterisitic of all fantasy. If a
> >world is the kind of place where fantastic things happen,
> >then they're inevitably going to seem a lot less fantastic
> >to the inhabitants than they will to their real-world
> >audience.
>
> True, but from what I've read, magic realist stories are set in the
> real-world audience's real world. Despite that, the characters still
react
> to fantastic, unreal events as though they were a bottle of milk or a
car
> crash.
>
In magical surealism, of course, they react identically to a bottle of
milk or a car crash. B-)
Actually, I always thought that *most* charecters in MR accept the
impossible; in most of the stuff I've read the one exception is the
totally ordinary hero who finds himself in this world-within-the world.
It is possible that this means it is not actual magical realism of
course.
--
Dave
The opinions above are a product of my memes and
do not necessarily correspond to my own.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
Dave Owen
Kate Orman wrote in message <7jet53$67l$1...@the-fly.zip.com.au>...
>Got it in one. Talking back to reviewers is a classic way for authors to
>make themselves look like arses. :-)
You may very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
Dave.
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
Oh, flip! It weren't me, I never did nuffin'. Deja posted it twice all
by itself, honest!
Can I go now?
--
Dave
The opinions above are a product of my memes and
do not necessarily correspond to my own.
Libroid of EU Skiffysoc http://www.ed.ac.uk/~sesoc
Cliff Bowman
> In article <19990606061325...@ngol07.aol.com>,
> Kafenken <kafe...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >For me, it gets annoying when authors stay unnaturally silent. "Oh,
> >they're trying not to look bad in front of everyone... gits."
>
> Got it in one. Talking back to reviewers is a classic way for authors to
> make themselves look like arses. :-) Better to try and graciously accept
> criticism, even if you don't take it all on board.
I think Finn was suggesting almost the exact opposite - that the lack
of any discussion looked odder, or perhaps awkward at best so that
authors look like they're avoiding the topic/thread in order to avoid
looking like arses - and end up looking like (to use Finn's
terminology) gits instead. There have been times when I've agreed with
my interpretation of what he's saying (i.e. we sometimes get a perhaps
unbalanced view of certain books because the authors tread warily).
> I also worried about the chilling effect it might have on people
> discussing the books - people keeping their thoughts to themselves because
> they don't want to get stomped on by the authors, or even just because
> they don't want to upset us.
>
That's the main reason I haven't tried goading any authors (that I
recall, anyway) into responding to reviews/reviewers more actively -
because some souls are more sensitive than others (and/or more
'caring'). If I had the front to suggest that I could review with
sufficient skill to be worth posting (that'd need to be much more than
my usual "Oh, I really quite enjoyed 'WotD'", "'Dark Path' is
brilliant", or "Lance Parkin wrote 'The Infinity Doctors'") then I'd
certainly hope to attract the authors's attention and not have them
worrying about discussing what I've written. Would everyone still post
though, if the authors tackled everything they disagreed with? I agree
it's unlikely - which is why I very carefully re-used Finn's term for
authors who go out of their way to avoid a fight. That way I can
eschew all blame and crawl back into my hole, sneakily...
Now you mention it, perhaps I'm not as bulshy as I thought I was??
Remembering a time when John Peel used to post in here (didn't JP
'chat' with reviewers only to degrade his reputation further? Shame
really).
Cheers,
Cliff Bowman
"Windows has detected movement of the mouse. Please reboot the computer
for the changes to take effect."
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/7855/
PS change "canyoupleasesendnospam" to "com"if replying via e-mail
Cliff Bowman
> In article <wosam-06069...@v90-28.ic.avalon.net>,
> M. Wesley Osam <wo...@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net> wrote:
> >In article <7jcjk7$mht$1...@the-fly.zip.com.au>, jb...@zipper.zip.com.au
> >(Jonathan Blum) wrote:
>
> >> Most magic
> >> realism seems to feature characters who pretty much accept the fantastic
> >> occurrences as part of their world, even if an odd part...
>
> >In fact, this is a characterisitic of all fantasy. If a
> >world is the kind of place where fantastic things happen,
> >then they're inevitably going to seem a lot less fantastic
> >to the inhabitants than they will to their real-world
> >audience.
>
> True, but from what I've read, magic realist stories are set in the
> real-world audience's real world. Despite that, the characters still react
> to fantastic, unreal events as though they were a bottle of milk or a car
> crash.
>
Possibly because, in reality, we *DO* live in a fantastic world. Most
of us don't even pretend to know how most of what goes on around us
"works", but we readily dismiss the wonderful as mundane. When was the
last time anyone here stared at a sunset blissfully? Watched a flock
of birds swoop and swirl in amazingly complex yet apparently
regimented patterns with anything but boredom? Observed dew glistening
on a myriad of tiny threads cast by a spider without brushing them
quickly out of the way as you push past?
Dammit, it *is* a wonderful world we live in!
William December Starr
wh...@geocities.canyoupleasesendnospam (Cliff Bowman) said:
>> True, but from what I've read, magic realist stories are set in the
>> real-world audience's real world. Despite that, the characters
>> still react to fantastic, unreal events as though they were a
>> bottle of milk or a car crash. [Kate Orman]
>
> Possibly because, in reality, we *DO* live in a fantastic world.
> Most of us don't even pretend to know how most of what goes on
> around us "works", but we readily dismiss the wonderful as mundane.
> When was the last time anyone here stared at a sunset blissfully?
> Watched a flock of birds swoop and swirl in amazingly complex yet
> apparently regimented patterns with anything but boredom? Observed
> dew glistening on a myriad of tiny threads cast by a spider without
> brushing them quickly out of the way as you push past?
>
> Dammit, it *is* a wonderful world we live in!
No, not really. But that's beside the point, which I think is this:
There are things that we take for granted as part of our world because
they've been there all along (e.g., sunsets, flocks of birds, spider
webs). Because we take them for granted, it's reasonable for
fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
world to take them for granted as well.
And then there are things that we _don't_ take for granted as part of
our world because they _haven't_ been there all along (e.g., people
levitating, indoor rainstorms, computers transmuting into hamsters).
Because we _don't_ take them for granted, it's _not_ reasonable for
fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
world to take them for granted either. When they do, apparently, it's
called "magical realism." Some people seem to like it, though I can't
for the life of me figure out why.
iain truskett - koschei
<URL:mailto:wh...@geocities.canyoupleasesendnospam> wrote:
>
> Possibly because, in reality, we *DO* live in a fantastic world. Most
> of us don't even pretend to know how most of what goes on around us
> "works", but we readily dismiss the wonderful as mundane.
Go see "Koyannisqatsi". Just the film if you want to see the world in a
different light.
--
iain, aka koschei <http://eh.org/~koschei/>
Famous last RPG words, number 879 -
"He won't be able to summon a demon THAT quick..."
Cliff Bowman
> In article <375d3ae3....@news.cwcom.net>,
> wh...@geocities.canyoupleasesendnospam (Cliff Bowman) said:
>
[snip]
> > Dammit, it *is* a wonderful world we live in!
What the hell had I been on that day? I still think it holds true, but
less so after a rotten day :(
> No, not really. But that's beside the point, which I think is this:
>
[snip]
>
> And then there are things that we _don't_ take for granted as part of
> our world because they _haven't_ been there all along (e.g., people
> levitating, indoor rainstorms, computers transmuting into hamsters).
> Because we _don't_ take them for granted, it's _not_ reasonable for
> fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
> world to take them for granted either. When they do, apparently, it's
> called "magical realism." Some people seem to like it, though I can't
> for the life of me figure out why.
>
Couldn't help picturing an old BT advert while reading that paragraph.
In it, some old biddy has a problem with her telephone. Come the next
day (or it might have been later the same day - this was advertising
land, after all) she tried the phone again before reporting the fault,
and it worked. To paraphrase (I can't recall her exact words) "Ah - I
was going to report that, but it's fixed itself!" with quite little
surprise.
Of course, there are degrees of magnitude etc. etc. - some things
would be quite incredible almost whatever the circimstances. However,
we do dismiss even the most unlikely of events as mundane. This
example (based on real life - I've seen people do similar to the old
lady in the BT add) people are quite willing to accept that quite
simple bits of technology are capable of repairing themselves (without
worrying about this being indicative of anauton invasion or anything).
It seems to me that at times it's almost as if we need to be warned in
advance that we're going to be impressed. "Ooooh, Ahhh - look at what
that chimp's doing" is close enough to a common phrase of wonder,
because we've been warned we're going to see wonderous things 'cos
we're going to the zoo/wildlife park. If we see a bird nest making in
a tree, however, we don't generally see that as a similarly wonderoous
activity as a chimp mucking about with sticks or playing with itself -
despite the fact that birds have much smaller brains than the average
chimp.
I suspect that, without a warning, most of us (and no I don't mean
*us* - obviously I mean *them* - we're far to intelligent) don't know
enough about "how the world works" to decipher just how unusual
something wonderous is - whether it's the same kind of magic they see
every day (instantaneous world-wide communication, being driven to
work each day by a series of controlled explosions, having the
National Lottery broadcast into our homes twice a week etc. etc.) or
some other unexplained phenomena which is more deserving of an "ooh"
or an "aaah"!
Erm.. at least, I suspect something along those lines. Sometimes.
M. Wesley Osam
Starr) wrote:
> Because we _don't_ take them for granted, it's _not_ reasonable for
> fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
> world to take them for granted either. When they do, apparently, it's
> called "magical realism." Some people seem to like it, though I can't
> for the life of me figure out why.
Well... the point is that they're *not* from our real world.
They're from fictional worlds, which may look like our world
sometimes, but are nonetheless places where things like
computers turning into hamsters are entirely normal.
Kate Orman
William December Starr <wds...@crl.com> wrote:
>And then there are things that we _don't_ take for granted as part of
>our world because they _haven't_ been there all along (e.g., people
>levitating, indoor rainstorms, computers transmuting into hamsters).
>Because we _don't_ take them for granted, it's _not_ reasonable for
>fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
>world to take them for granted either. When they do, apparently, it's
>called "magical realism." Some people seem to like it, though I can't
>for the life of me figure out why.
According to my "Cambridge Guide to Fiction in English", magic realism
started out partly as a satire on the manipulation of truth in South
American politics. Its hallmark is the juxtaposiiton of realistic,
"reliable" narration with "extravagant fantasy". It questions our
assumptions about truth and about storytelling.
"Some people" do indeed "like it" - the "Guide" lists numerous acclaimed
writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, as examples
of the style.
I'm no expert on magic realism, but I don't think "Unnatural History" is
really an example of it (although the influence is there). One of our
goals was to make the fantastic elements seem as real as possible - not
otherworldly and mystical, but solid, concrete, in your face. We also
wanted the characters to react to them realistically. If you were attacked
by an imaginary creature, you'd react as though you had been assaulted.
Science fiction is full of people behaving in unrealistic ways just
because they're off in space - we wanted to avoid that.
I think this approach is what Finn found disappointing - we brought the
extraordinary events down to an ordinary level.
(You won't learn much about a large, complex literary genre from a handful
of newsgroup postings. And I've found very little on the Web. If you're
curious about magic realism, I recommend a trip to the library.)
William December Starr
wo...@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net (M. Wesley Osam) said:
> Well... the point is that they're *not* from our real world.
> They're from fictional worlds, which may look like our world
> sometimes, but are nonetheless places where things like computers
> turning into hamsters are entirely normal.
Except that a world in which things like computers turning into
hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at all...
<rant> despite which some authors insist that it would, which tends to
really piss off people who make the mistake of thinking about what
they're reading </rant>.
Dangermouse
Kate Orman <kor...@zipper.zip.com.au> wrote in
> If you were attacked
> by an imaginary creature, you'd react as though you had been assaulted.
If I were attacked by *anything*...
--
"This path has been placed before you; the choice to take it is yours
alone"
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Mansion/4845/
(Now updated - season 6!)
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
How would it be different? I can easily envision a world where magic
exists, and is possibly taken for granted, but is still very similar to
our world, with computers (which may or may not be capable of turning
into hamsters) and Doctor Who books and the Teletubbies and grinning
control freaks on TV telling you to trust them and beautiful spring
mornings and no parking signs anywhere enyone might want to park and so
on.
Come to that a world in which it was possible for a species that evolved
on a completely different planet, with two hearts, a radically different
retinal structure, and the capacity for self-regeneration, to not only
look completely human but be capable of crossbreeding with us wouldn't
bear much resemblence to the real world either...
--
Dave, who is almost certain his computer won't turn into a hamster.
Warhead
wh...@geocities.canyoupleasesendnospam (Cliff Bowman) wrote:
> I suspect that, without a warning, most of us (and no I don't mean
> *us* - obviously I mean *them* - we're far to intelligent) don't know
> enough about "how the world works" to decipher just how unusual
> something wonderous is
There is that "Law" about any technology too advanced to be understood
being indistinguishable from magic...well, that makes most of the world
magic for me...
---------->Warhead<----------
www.i.am/warhead
Jonathan Blum
>hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at all...
><rant> despite which some authors insist that it would, which tends to
>really piss off people who make the mistake of thinking about what
>they're reading </rant>.
But a world in which the British space program got to Mars repeatedly in
the early '70s, a time in which aliens invaded London several times a
year... that looks just like our world. :-)
Regards,
Jon Blum
(...just so long as the Beatles still broke up in 1970, of course)
Helen
William December Starr wrote in message >
>Except that a world in which things like computers turning into
>hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at all...
><rant> despite which some authors insist that it would,
Well, like if it was natural, who'd know the difference?? <innocent smile>
which tends to
>really piss off people who make the mistake of thinking about what
>they're reading </rant>.
Excuse me... the point you seem to be making is that readers of fantasy
don't *think*...
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write good secondary world fiction??
This stuff has to be hand crafted from scratch almost. And to find a writer
who can not only suspend disbelief, but also CREATE a belief in their world
that stands up to the picky reader is a gem beyond price.
Apart from that, your comment is decidely insulting, to say the least.
Analog subscriber, are you??
William December Starr
Daibhid Cheinnedelh <D.M.K...@sms.ed.ac.uk> said:
>> Except that a world in which things like computers turning into
>> hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at all...
>> <rant> despite which some authors insist that it would, which tends to
>> really piss off people who make the mistake of thinking about what
>> they're reading </rant>. [wdstarr]
>
> How would it be different? I can easily envision a world where
> magic exists, and is possibly taken for granted, but is still very
> similar to our world, with computers (which may or may not be
> capable of turning into hamsters)
I can't. I can imagine a world with those rules of reality being
strongly _analogous_ to our own -- still having nation-states and
greed and romance and economics and guilds/unions and all that, 'cause
people would still be people and tanstaafl[1] would probably still be
true -- but I can't imagine a world with those rules being so nearly
identical to our own that a neutral observer (e.g., the person reading
the story) wouldn't even know that it _wasn't_ our own world until one
of the weird-different things happened.
[1] Tanstaafl: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." Coined by
Robert A. Heinlein in _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, as far as I know.
[ *snip* ]
> Come to that a world in which it was possible for a species that
> evolved on a completely different planet, with two hearts, a
> radically different retinal structure, and the capacity for
> self-regeneration, to not only look completely human but be capable
> of crossbreeding with us wouldn't bear much resemblence to the real
> world either...
Ah, but who said that any of that happened in the DW universe? :-)
William December Starr
"Helen" <hfa...@innotts.co.uk> said:
>> Except that a world in which things like computers turning into
>> hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at
>> all... <rant> despite which some authors insist that it would,
>> [wdstarr]
>
> Well, like if it was natural, who'd know the difference?? <innocent smile>
An observer from our world, e.g., the reader. Remember, we're talking
about magical realism here, which, by definition (if I understand
correctly) consists of totally impossible, magical things happening in
_our_ world.
>> which tends to really piss off people who make the mistake of
>> thinking about what they're reading </rant>.
>
> Excuse me... the point you seem to be making is that readers of
> fantasy don't *think*...
???? Not sure where you got that from; it certainly wasn't my intent.
It's only the subset of readers -- of fantasy, hard sf and everything
in between -- who go around with stars in their eyes over badly written
stuff that I intended to insult, or at least to set myself apart from.
> Do you have any idea how hard it is to write good secondary world
> fiction?? This stuff has to be hand crafted from scratch
> almost. And to find a writer who can not only suspend disbelief, but
> also CREATE a belief in their world that stands up to the picky
> reader is a gem beyond price.
Absolutely. What I'm complaining about are the authors who can't --
or won't -- do that, but let their work get published anyway, either
becauise they don't care or because they think that some point their
story makes in more important than good workmanship. Consider, for
example, Bradbury's famous "A Sound of Thunder" short story[1]:
impressive as hell until you think about it, and then it all falls
apart, but Bradbury -- and zillions of readers, apparently -- either
don't realize that or just don't care because the story's punch line
is so Totally Kewl...
[1] The one in which people go on a time traveling big game hunting
safari to bag a T Rex, and one of the clients violates the rules by
stepping off the indicated path and accidentally kills a butterfly...
> Apart from that, your comment is decidely insulting, to say the
> least. Analog subscriber, are you??
Sorry to undermine your never-ending crusade against that magazine and
its readers (unless I'm misremembering you for someone else, in which
case I apologize profusely), but, well, I think I may have read a
story in an Analog once. Maybe. (I never was really a magazine rat
anyway; always preferred novels and published anthologies. And no, I
_don't_ mean _The Best of Analog, Vol. XVIII_ or something like that.)
William December Starr
jb...@zipper.zip.com.au (Jonathan Blum) said:
>> Except that a world in which things like computers turning into
>> hamsters are entirely normal _wouldn't_ look like our world at all...
>> <rant> despite which some authors insist that it would, which tends
>> to really piss off people who make the mistake of thinking about what
>> they're reading </rant>. [wdstarr]
>
> But a world in which the British space program got to Mars repeatedly
> in the early '70s, a time in which aliens invaded London several times
> a year... that looks just like our world. :-)
If you posit that (1) the Mars expeditions never found any evidence of
other civilization (or the people who did find them never let word get
out to the public) and (2) the alien visitations were well covered up,
then yes, that world could still look a lot like ours. (I'm afraid I'm
sufficiently ignorant as to not know whether those conditions apply to
the Who world.) Even blowing up Big Ben and killing off a certain
British rock band (no, not the Beatles) in 1976 would still leave a
world mostly like ours, especially if most/all of the overt divergence
happened relatively recently, say, in late November of 1963 and following.
Besides, in all seriousness, even on Earth Who the same general laws of
physics and reality seem to apply, at least with regard to the real
lives of the vast majority of people and nations. Maybe UNIT knows how
to make a computer turn into a hamster, but it still isn't the sort of
event that Joe Blow is going to take in stride the way that characters
in magical realism stories might.
Jonathan Dennis
William December Starr wrote:
> ???? Not sure where you got that from; it certainly wasn't my intent.
> It's only the subset of readers -- of fantasy, hard sf and everything
> in between -- who go around with stars in their eyes over badly written
> stuff that I intended to insult, or at least to set myself apart from.
> Sorry to undermine your never-ending crusade against that magazine and
> its readers (unless I'm misremembering you for someone else, in which
> case I apologize profusely), but, well, I think I may have read a
> story in an Analog once. Maybe. (I never was really a magazine rat
> anyway; always preferred novels and published anthologies. And no, I
> _don't_ mean _The Best of Analog, Vol. XVIII_ or something like that.)
>
Just for curiosity's sake, what do you read?
Jonathan W. Dennis
new sig file under construction
Helen
William December Starr wrote in message <7jr64g$q...@crl.crl.com>...
>
>Sorry to undermine your never-ending crusade against that magazine and
>its readers (unless I'm misremembering you for someone else, in which
>case I apologize profusely), but, well, I think I may have read a
>story in an Analog once. Maybe. (I never was really a magazine rat
>anyway; always preferred novels and published anthologies. And no, I
>_don't_ mean _The Best of Analog, Vol. XVIII_ or something like that.)
Crusade?? Nah... just I tend to see certain arguments cropping up here that
used to turn up on the letters page in that last bastion of "Hard" sf... "If
it can't be supported by hard science, it's wrong/evil/poor writing/crap"
etc...
I LIKE a sense of whimsey in my reading material. I LIKE being thrown a
curved ball every now and then. There's a big difference between that, and
not thinking on the part of the reader / generally poor grasp of "real world
episitemology" on the part of the writer. Something the Hard SF nuts seem to
find difficult to grasp...
Nick Caldwell
wrote:
>In article <7jjt0p$m...@crl3.crl.com>,
>William December Starr <wds...@crl.com> wrote:
>
>>And then there are things that we _don't_ take for granted as part of
>>our world because they _haven't_ been there all along (e.g., people
>>levitating, indoor rainstorms, computers transmuting into hamsters).
>>Because we _don't_ take them for granted, it's _not_ reasonable for
>>fictional characters who are presented as being people from our real
>>world to take them for granted either. When they do, apparently, it's
>>called "magical realism." Some people seem to like it, though I can't
>>for the life of me figure out why.
>
>According to my "Cambridge Guide to Fiction in English", magic realism
>started out partly as a satire on the manipulation of truth in South
>American politics. Its hallmark is the juxtaposiiton of realistic,
>"reliable" narration with "extravagant fantasy". It questions our
>assumptions about truth and about storytelling.
I think also one of the things about magic realism is (forgive me if
this has already been stated) that it brings magic into the "real"
world, and not a subcreated world.
--
Nick Caldwell-----------------------------------------
s32...@student.uq.edu.au | http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/
------------------------------------------------------
Henry Potts
> Henry Potts wrote
> > Those critical of the book still, for the most part, commend
> > the writing style and how the book was put together.
>
> Except me.
>
> > It is not the mechanics of the writing that are being criticised,
> > but the strategic direction. "UH" does what it intended to do,
> > but some people don't like its intentions.
>
> On the contrary, I think Unnatural History misses the mark in several
> major ways. I've gone into detail in my own review, so I won't bore
> you all here... but I will point out that had it been written in a
> dreamily poetic style of high fantasy, it would have been an absolute
> triumph.
>
> That genre can get away with slack plotting, since that's not what
> it's interested in. Some of the ideas in this book are awesome, but
> their prosaic presentation means that the reader's emotions aren't
> engaged.
I return to the fray having now finished "UH"...
I don't know whether I agee with you, Finn, or not. I think the writing
style was great and held the book together through some dodgy plotting.
"UH" isn't like "The Scarlet Empress", which did get away with some
loose plotting, in that it is trying to say things with its plot and not
just presenting an atmosphere, a fictional heuristic. And it is in that
regard that I think "UH" has most problems as the plot is too slack at
times and overly reminiscent of past adventures ("Return of the Living
Dad" meets "The Infinity Doctors"?). Some good ideas, lots of great
prose, but the plotting drags it down for me... although it's still way
better than "Revolution Man" by Paul 'beginning, middle and what was
that other one?' Leonard.
--
Henry
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
Sorry, but that is *exactly* what William was objecting to. Thinking
about it he's got a point, but as satire it probably works.
I've been thinking about this, and despite my earlier posts I don't
think I've ever read magical realism. I've read what the "Encyclopedia
of Fantasy" calls "wainscot" novels, where magic exists in the real
world, and only one group of people know about it ("Little, Big" is
possibly the best known, but for my money Gaiman's "Neverwhere" is the
best), but I can't think of a book set in a world exactly like ours
where magic is just accepted.
--
Dave, who'd be interested in a reading list.
The opinions above are a product of my memes and
do not necessarily correspond to my own.
Libroid of EU Skiffysoc http://www.ed.ac.uk/~sesoc
Helen Fayle
Daibhid Cheinnedelh wrote:
> , but I can't think of a book set in a world exactly like ours
> where magic is just accepted.
Charles de Lint's contemporary fantasies, plus the contemporary novels of
Jim Blaylock and Tim Powers.Susan Cooper's "Dark is Rising" sequence. Pat
Leitch's "Jinny" novels; Stuart Gordon's "Watchers" trilogy. Almost any
contemporary supernatural based horror novel you care to mention...; Tanya
Huff's "Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light", her "Victory Nelson" novels and
"Summon the Keeper"; Katherine Kurtz' "Lammas Night" (a true classic, that
one) and in collaboration with Deborah Turner, her "adept" series...
That's just off the top of my head...
Is it me, or did that sort of thing used to be taken for granted in
childrens books at one time?? ISTR taking magic AND science pretty much in
my stride as a kid. OTOH, I was educated in both traditions. I've never had
a problem reconciling the two approaches!
Daibhid Cheinnedelh
hfa...@innotts.co.uk wrote:
>
>
> Daibhid Cheinnedelh wrote:
>
> > , but I can't think of a book set in a world exactly like ours
> > where magic is just accepted.
>
> Charles de Lint's contemporary fantasies, plus the contemporary
novels of
> Jim Blaylock and Tim Powers.Susan Cooper's "Dark is Rising" sequence.
Pat
> Leitch's "Jinny" novels; Stuart Gordon's "Watchers" trilogy. Almost
any
> contemporary supernatural based horror novel you care to mention...;
Tanya
> Huff's "Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light", her "Victory Nelson"
novels and
> "Summon the Keeper"; Katherine Kurtz' "Lammas Night" (a true classic,
that
> one) and in collaboration with Deborah Turner, her "adept" series...
>
> That's just off the top of my head...
>
You've just pretty much described half my "Must read at some point"
list!
I'd question the "supernatural based horror" bit. In those books,
surely, magic *isn't* accepted, that's why it's shocking when it
happens.
--
Dave, who, thinking about it, would add Diane Wynne Jones to the list.
Paul Andinach
> I've been thinking about this, and despite my earlier posts I don't
> think I've ever read magical realism. I've read what the
> "Encyclopedia of Fantasy" calls "wainscot" novels, where magic
> exists in the real world, and only one group of people know about it
> ("Little, Big" is possibly the best known, but for my money Gaiman's
> "Neverwhere" is the best)
"Neverwhere" is good, but can I mention Stephen Dedman's "The Art of
Arrow-cutting", which isn't as famous as it deserves to be.
"Wainscot" stories. Good name. I'll have to remember that.
Paul
--
The sixth Sikh sheik's sixth sheep's sick.
Paul Andinach
> Daibhid Cheinnedelh wrote:
-snip "I know about wainscot novels"-
> > but I can't think of a book set in a world exactly like ours
> > where magic is just accepted.
>
> Charles de Lint's contemporary fantasies, plus the contemporary
> novels of Jim Blaylock and Tim Powers. Susan Cooper's "Dark is
> Rising" sequence. Pat Leitch's "Jinny" novels; Stuart Gordon's
> "Watchers" trilogy. Almost any contemporary supernatural based
> horror novel you care to mention...; Tanya Huff's "Gate of Darkness,
> Circle of Light", her "Victory Nelson" novels and "Summon the
> Keeper"; Katherine Kurtz' "Lammas Night" (a true classic, that one)
> and in collaboration with Deborah Turner, her "adept" series...
How 'bout that? I thought I was the only one who'd read those Adept
novels... :)
But all those books are wainscot novels, or at least the ones I've
read are.