Goat Notes

"The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

Philip K Dick, 1980.

SF as the rightful literature not of "What if - ?" but "My God; what if - ?!" is a motto I would willingly blaze in forty-eight point letters of gold upon every ideas folder I ever keep.

And I wonder how much of the spirit of modern fantasy can be well understood in such terms - not so much of "My God; what if this should come?", but of "My God; what if this should have been?"

To get from the idea to a story worthy of it, we then mostly need a protagonist who can answer, "By God, then this...!"  - and to great triumph or tragedy, or occasionally even to great laughter, carry their answer and the reader all the way home.

Following on from Nicola Griffith's Russ Pledge post in June, and the ongoing discussions about the literary invisibility of female authors* -

Since the end of May, guestblogger Anna at Echidne of the Snakes has been posting a Sunday series on A Literary Canon of Women Writers, beginning with Enheduanna of Ur (23rd century BCE).  She's now reached the thirteenth century, featuring the distinctly SF-friendly troubadour Marie de France.  The scope is global, the detail often considerable, and the vast majority of its subjects previously unknown to me.  But not, by any means, unknown to the literary communities of their day.  Highly recommended and a big eye-opener.  I'd be interested to hear other people's responses to it.

Echidne's archiving system is somewhat peculiar, and I can't find any way to link to the latest post directly, but it is easily found by a little scrolling down.  Direct links to all previous posts are provided at the top of the new one - though, because of said archiving system, they may initially appear not to be taking the reader to the post specified, even on broadband.  But a few seconds' wait will hit the target.


* I began to write 'women authors', before realizing that this required me to be cool with the phrase 'men authors', which scrapes fingernails down the slate of my soul. Though not as much as those charmings who freely refer to groups entirely composed of humans as 'males', 'females', 'whites', 'blacks', 'olds', 'youngs', 'clevers', 'stupids', 'sicks', 'healthies', and all those other adjective nouns which they deploy with impartial style and elegance.

I said I would get back to this.

Let's begin with the assumption that a story's protagonist wants something, and that they have some sort of personal code, constraining what they will do to get it.  If either of these is false, I'm probably not among the intended audience.

So a victory would seem to consist of more or less getting what they're going for, without becoming hopelessly corrupt in the process.  If the means are true but the end fails, then we have the epic tragedy of the doomed stand.  If the end is won but the means fail, we get the ironic tragedy of the hollow victory.  If the ends fail because the means strayed, we get the classic tragedy of sin bringing forth nemesis; and, finally, if the ends fail and the means were vile but there is no particular connection between these disappointments, we get the literary tragedy of the book hitting the wall.  So far, so clear.

Within a single story, all of these things may occur at multiple levels.  The story itself, though, is one and only one of them as a whole.  I want to look at one of my favourite kinds here - the first one, victory, or protagonist triumphant.  But that covers a lot of territory yet.  It can be uncomplicated and unconditional: Eddore destroyed and the Hell-Hole harrowed.  It can be bittersweet: Sauron defeated, and many fair and wonderful things passing with Frodo into the veiled West forever.  And it can diminish into a minor chord of utter accomplishment and heartbreak: Ged done with doing, all his gifts given, and carried a-dragonback home.

No, there is nothing straightforward or vulgar about victory.

One thing that is not straightforward in the crafting of it, is what the reader most ardently cares about.  Can the reader be sure the author will give them a victory this time?  If so, where is the tension?  And if not, why did the reader just spend their hard-earned bills for yet another unwanted reminder that life sure can suck?

Which brings forth a choice.  One way, for the "tough-minded" reader, is to establish early on that the protagonist's success is in very serious doubt.  They can lose.  They can lose it.  They might not win, or they might go so far off-beam that you couldn't care less if they won that way.  But... but... they're not quite down yet!  And at the climax of the story, if the author doesn't cheat, this version of realism pays its dividends in earned YAY AWESOME THEY WON! - or in OH NO NO NO SHIIIIIT! - power.

There are problems with this approach.  It takes exactly one word to provide a substantial spoiler.  Also, once a reader has got an author's measure, questions like, "Can Plain John Smith defeat an alien god - before it makes of the Universe a hell forever?!?" tend to answer themselves quite independently of their superficial probability.  But presumably we care about the sub-goals along the way too, so each of these can offer its own unpredictable tension.  "Will they win?" is not an easy question, nonetheless, to sustain at greater length than the novella.  Sword-and-sorcery, with its relatively low stakes and frequently dodgy protagonists, is probably the SFnal subgenre best fitted to ask it.

"Will they win?" is not really a good way to describe my approach as a writer.  Nor the approaches of most of the writers I read.

This leads me on to the next approach - which asks arguably the master-question of science fiction as a genre.  This is the question suggested by seawasp's 'Kirking it' preference - How Will They Win?  I defer its delights for a further post.

Got back last night from a thoroughly revivifying week with the Mam in Anglesey.  Heard our first cuckoo, by the feet of Holy Mountain!  Saw our first puffin, clowning around by the great cleft in the rocks of South Stack!  Ate sea bass with banana and tomato chutney at the tiny, unpretentious, but ever-delicious Harbourfront Bistro!    (The chutney is infinitely more scrumptious than it sounds, and complements the bass to a nicety.)  Began my crisp-leaved new copy of Grand Central Arena on the train home! 

The one thing I did not do was add wordcount to the novel.  Instead, I lolled, scribbled, quaffed, and let my mind range over the possibilities for rewriting the current arc into a clean and solid draft.  Still ranging, but back to the writing again now.

Life is good.