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Averting War: It’s Not as Simple as Pacifism

Averting War: It’s Not as Simple as Pacifism

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Trial-of-Intentions-small2This is Part Two of a two-part article, wherein I explore two fundamental responses a people or nation might have to the threat of war. In Part One, I talked about the “Escalation to Fight.” This time, I want to discuss averting war in the first place.

Folks who read part one will remember that I started out with the phrase, “War. What is it good for?” — a reference to Edwin Starr’s version of the song by the same name. We’ll see if the song snippet is relevant by the time I’m finished.

First, let me say, that I don’t pretend these are the only two responses to the threat of war. In fact, nations can and do engage in war as a perennial part of their industry. Or, it’s a response on religious grounds. (Thanks to those who’ve commented on Part One of this article for drawing attention to these things.) And I’m sure there are more. I’m having to be overly reductive due to spatial constraints. So, please bear with me.

So, then, if a nation or kingdom elects not to escalate to violence, another response is to try and avert war before it begins. They might engage in peace talks. They might surrender. They might try to buy their way out of the conflict. Etc. In essence, they work to find resolution to the alternative, which would eventuate in massive casualties.

To avoid the deaths of so many countrymen, a nation may prefer to be conquered. Or to cede any number of things: land, wealth. You get the idea.

And I can see how in a fantasy novel, the writer could take any of these approaches and make them work. I’m not of the opinion that it must always be an Armageddon-level battle to be interesting.

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Fantasy Clichés Done Right

Fantasy Clichés Done Right

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James P. Blaylock
James P. Blaylock

Like all genres of fiction, fantasy has a growing list of clichés and played-out tropes: the orphaned farm boy who’s actually the chosen one, the quest for a magical artifact to save the world, the generic medieval European setting, the Tolkien-lite denizenry of humans and elves versus orcs, goblins, and trolls…. On one hand, it’s surprising to see these tropes crop up over and over again. Authors are supposed to be imaginative. Is it really that hard to come up with original ideas? On the other hand, it makes a good bit of sense to see certain recurring tropes. Fantasy is, after all, rooted in mythology, and one can make a strong case that fantasy taps into symbols and archetypes coded into the human psyche, whether we’re talking about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or the simple Jungian archetype of the shadow representing the basest of human instincts.

In practice, of course, the truth lays somewhere in the middle. Mediocre writers reuse certain tropes and make them cliché because they do nothing new with them. Expert writers create new tropes or take old ones and make them new in the context of unique characters and original words.

This holds true not only for the classics, but also for new fantasy fiction, as author James P. Blaylock discovered when he was a judge for the World Fantasy Awards in 2012. “I was certain that zombies and vampires had been so overworked that I’d have no interest in any of them,” he recalls, “but then I ended up putting one of each on my shortlist: ‘From the Teeth of Strange Children’ by Lisa Hannett and ‘Younger Women’ by Karen Joy Fowler.”

With this idea in mind, here are a dozen or so books that transcend the tired fantasy clichés they utilize, as recommended by an assortment of writers in the genre. (The list is hardly comprehensive, mind you, so make sure to add your recommendations in the comments.)

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Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

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headshotTheWaterKnife-PaoloBacigalupi-201x300Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel, The Windup Girl, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten novels of the year, and yet he still talks to people like me, which makes him either very strange or very cool (probably a little of both.)

On May 25th his latest, The Water Knife, will be out, and this near future science fiction novel is set in a mega-drought-stricken, American southwest. The story explores issues of water rights, climate change, and the gratuitous destruction of the state of Texas, all of which we discuss in the interview.

He also takes the time to talk about his long and winding path towards a writing career. Anyone who’s ever reached the point of despair (in other words, all aspiring writers) will want to give this a listen.

After getting off Skype with me, he had another interview with NPR. So, without further ado: Paolo Bacigalupi’s warmup interview on the day he spoke to NPR.

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Escalation to Fight: Understanding Magic in Trial of Intentions

Escalation to Fight: Understanding Magic in Trial of Intentions

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Trial-of-Intentions-small2War. What is it good for?

For some reason, when I sat down to write this two-part article on war in fantasy fiction, Edwin Starr’s version of the song “War, what is it good for?” popped into my head. There’s probably a reason for that. We’ll see if it bears out as I go.

In the broadest possible terms, there are two ways a people or nation will attempt to deal with war: escalate and fight (with the hope of victory), or do all they can to avert war (without sacrificing their freedom). I admit of the oversimplification here, but it’s a short two-part article series, after all.

For part one, lets hit the first topic: escalation to fight. And I’ll use some examples from my current series to try and illustrate the point.

War is a mainstay in fantasy fiction, and in epic fantasy, particularly. The stakes are high — freedom, the right to rule, stuff like that. To win or defend such things usually requires armies, dangerous political intrigue, and war.

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Charles de Lint and The Little Country

Charles de Lint and The Little Country

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The Little CountryIn talking about portal fantasies last time, I was moved to reread one of the more unusual examples of the sub-genre, Charles de Lint’s The Little Country (1991).

The book is in a very real sense two books, but it isn’t a simple play-within-a-play, story-within-a-story thing: Each book is being read by the protagonist of the other. The now-overused self-referential concept known as “meta” wasn’t so common when The Little Country was written, but it might have been invented to describe the novel. The book is extremely self-aware, something which even the protagonists are forced to recognize.

The two stories do run parallel to one another, but this isn’t a case of success in one world reflecting or depending on success in the other world, as we see in King and Straub’s The Talisman, for example. The characters don’t overlap, the settings aren’t the same, though you might say that the outcomes are. There is a physical object common to both worlds, a standing stone with an opening through which objects and people can pass. Both worlds have the tradition that passing through the stone nine times at moonrise effects some magical change – entrance into the land of the faerie, a cure for sickness or barrenness, etc.

In the thread which most resembles our world, Janey Little, a twenty-something traditional musician, finds a book in her grandfather’s attic – a one-of-a-kind hitherto unknown work left in her grandfather’s keeping by the author, an old and eccentric friend. The book is called “The Little Country.”

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How To Write a Good Fight Scene

How To Write a Good Fight Scene

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Marshall Versus the Assassins-small
…my fight scenes trigger your mirror neurons (apparently).

You can’t. Not a generically good fight scene. Just like a good love scene, “good” for a fight scene depends on the literary purpose and the audience.

Let’s assume, though, that you are writing some kind of action adventure yarn — I’m qualified to advise on this because this is what I write professionally, and my fight scenes trigger your mirror neurons (apparently) — here’s what I’d tell you over a beer.

Have a Model of How the Relevant Martial Art Works

By “model” I mean that you can describe to yourself how this kind of fighting works. E.g. is it all “cut parry cut”, or about crossing blades then working on the blade, or wrestling or what?

It helps if your model is based on reality or at least experimental reconstructions — if you’re using any European weapons, check out Youtube using the search term “HEMA”. You can of course make everything up, however more and more people are becoming HEMA-literate, so there is a good chance your book will date horribly.

The model should account for all the equipment used by your combatants, e.g. What is a shield for? What weapons break the armour? This ties the combat scene into the rest of the world story and brings to life the military culture and technology. For example, if combat requires a shield, then losing a shield can drive part of the plot. Oh, and, whatever you do, don’t treat armour as set dressing or costume. If it doesn’t stop weapons, nobody would wear it.

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Adventures in RPGs: Long Arc or Short Arc?

Adventures in RPGs: Long Arc or Short Arc?

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Scan 11AD&D carried me from middle school right through college, and about seventy-five percent of the time, I wound up as the referee. The core group with whom I played continued right on getting together for another fifteen years or so after graduation, engaging in annual reunions all over the country.

And I kept right on refereeing. After all, I had unfinished stories to “tell.” These story arcs played out over weeks, months, semesters, and then years. Many remain unfinished to this day. In the main, the rest of the group enjoyed my epic, often convoluted approach. For better or for worse, we weren’t much for hack-and-slash, in-and-out heroism.

Or were we? I’ll never forget Eric S. musing, as one reunion year wound down, that it sure would be nice if for once we could storm the castle, rescue the maiden, and be done.

His wistful comment stemmed in part from my having that very year posed a variant on that longed-for maiden-in-the-tower paternalistic standby: Orcus hired the party to rescue a damsel in distress, but this particular blushing violet turned out to be a truly enormous, deformed frog that had to be kissed in order to… well. Let’s just say there aren’t enough kisses in creation to make the wife of Orcus any more desirable.

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Want to Break Into Comics?

Want to Break Into Comics?

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onibk_292  If you want to break into the big comic publishers, a bit of internet research, or visiting a local comic-con will reveal the accepted wisdom pretty quickly:

  • If you’re an artist, show your portfolio to editors at a con, or establish an online portfolio and email the editors. There’s lots of advice in different places about breaking in as an artist, and lots of places to learn (the comicsexperience.com podcast seems to me to be a great place to start).
  • If you’re a writer, pair up with an artist, make a comic, sell to the smaller comic presses to show your abilities and then approach bigger publishers, who, of course, offer a bit more money.

There isn’t really an advertised direct route in for writers either way. The submission guidelines at DC are pretty clear that they’re only looking for artists.

Marvel does let on that they’re looking for writers and artists, but mostly through the process laid out above.

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Knock, Knock: Or, The Portal Fantasy Revisited

Knock, Knock: Or, The Portal Fantasy Revisited

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Moonheart-smallThis week I participated in a Mild Meld over on SFSignal on the theme of portal fantasies. I’m not the only person who did, and you can see the whole post here, but, as is so often the case when you’re asked to consider an intriguing idea, I’m still thinking about it. Warning: For the sake of clarity I repeat some of my SFSignal observations, but I don’t overlap much.

Working on that post, and thinking about classic portal fantasies such as the The Wizard of Oz or the The Chronicles of Narnia, or the more recent Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (though even they aren’t particularly “recent,” are they?) got me wondering about the evolution of the portal fantasy over the last 35 years.

Let me review the classic version: Human beings from our world find an entrance to a secondary world where magic works, the supernatural exists, etc., and adventures are undertaken. Often there’s a kind “quest” element involved as well, in that the protagonists have to complete a task in order to be able to return to our world. These are often called “primary world fantasies” even though most or all of the action takes place in the other world.

Again, in the classic version of the portal fantasy, the reader is riding the shoulder of the protagonist, seeing and learning everything about the new world at the same time the protagonist does. CS Lewis even introduced new protagonists, so that he could keep explaining things in later books without seeming repetitious. Of course we all recognize this as a use of the stranger-in-a-strange-land trope (SISL), which is invariably interdependent with the portal trope.

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One Picture = One Thousand Words . . .?

One Picture = One Thousand Words . . .?

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Huff price 1About a month ago Gabe Dybing wrote an excellent post in which he, among other things, praised my Dhulyn and Parno Novels (thanks again, Gabe). I obviously don’t quarrel with anything he had to say, but there was one observation that made me raise my eyebrows, and that was his take on the cover art. The whole post is worth reading (not just the part about my books) but what Dying has to say about my covers is important not just for me, but for any of us involved in the writing and reading of books. Looking at the art from the sales perspective, what it is about the cover that encourages a reader to buy a book, Dybing has two caveats. First, he feels the characters are too “posed,” in that they’re “battle-ready” when nothing is in fact happening. Second, he objects to the photo-realism, since it could restrain the readers in imagining the characters for themselves. As it happens, he feels the artist, Steve Stone, did capture Dhulyn pretty well, except for her skin colour, and her “wolf smile.”

Huff PriceInteresting bit about that. The artist chose his models from modeling/acting agency photos to match the physical descriptions I’d provided to my editor/publisher, Sheila Gilbert at DAW. It wasn’t until the models arrived for the session that Stone realized the woman was black. I know, it does make you wonder what the photos were like, but that’s not a question I can answer. The situation was explained to her, and apparently the model/actress didn’t mind being depicted as a woman from a race noted for the pallor of their skin and the redness of their hair.

As for the wolf’s smile, you don’t really want to see that. Ever. Trust me.

On the whole, I think I’ve been very lucky with my cover art, but before I go on I have to confess a couple of things. First, I have almost no visual memory (except for faces), and don’t really respond to visual cues. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t describe to you the cover of any book, not even the ones I’ve read over and over. Okay, I can recognize the Tenniel drawings from Alice in Wonderland, the original art from the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Dali illustrations from a recent edition of Don Quijote, but there I’m thinking about the artists, not the books. And even there I’m pretty sure I couldn’t tell you what was on the covers.

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