Hugo Novel Review (Part 2): Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross

written by David Steffen

This is a continuation of the partial review of Neptune’s Brood I posted in July. As I said in that review, the book took a while to hook me on the plot, but got me early with the interesting worldbuilding involving posthuman android bodies with transmittable, transferrable minds. The protagonist, Krina-Alizond-114 is a historian of accountacy practices, specializing in the history of FTL scams. FTL travel has never been invented in this universe, but neither has anyone proven that it’s impossible, so every once in a while someone claims to have found the secret and seeks to collect tons of money from fraud. As the book starts, Krina is en route to the water planet Shin-Tethys to find out what happened to her missing sister.

Overall, I liked the book for similar reasons as I mentioned in the initial review–really interesting worldbuilding, particularly around the speculation of a plausible financial system that would work in an intergalactic civilization that operates by the physical laws as we understand them, particularly the speed of light limit on communication. And once the action finally starts, it keeps up that pace pretty steadily.

But there were some things that bugged me, to an extent that I wouldn’t recommend the book without caveat.

1. The backstory of what reasons really underlie Krina’s trip to Shin-Tethys are given in trickles at intervals throughout the book. I thought much of this information came too late, so that by the time it came, I had to re-evaluate significant portions of what the character had revealed before.

2. Very near the end there’s a big reveal that, although the reasons behind it are revealed, comes out of the blue as completely absurd in its magnitude. I had trouble swallowing that one.

3. The ending was very unsatisfying. Deus ex machina. Much too easy after the rest of the book is full of nearly insurmountable challenges. It seemed like the challenges had stacked up and up to such a degree that Stross wrote himself into a corner and had to just cheat his way around the ending.

Overall, the book had a lot of really great parts, and has a lot to recommend it. In the end I didn’t feel that it really stuck the landing.

Laura Resnick on Cover Art

Laura Resnick has authored 6 fantasy-detective-comedy novels (the Esther Diamond series from Daw), 3 fantasy novels (the Silerian trilogy from Tor), 15 romance novels (from Silhouette), many short stories (mostly in DAW anthologies), several essays on print and screen fiction, and “Rejection, Romance, and Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer.”

She won the Campbell award for best writer and was a finalist for the Rita award. She won the Romantic Times Magazine award 3 times. She writes “The Mad Scribbler,” a monthly opinion column for Nink. For the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s bulletin, she wrote a quarterly opinion column, “The Filthy Pro.” She wrote a monthly column, “The Comely Curmedgeon,” for Nink. She has served as member of the board of directors, president elect, and president of Novelists, Inc.

Laura Resnick has done extensive research, including interviews with authors and art directors, on how cover art is developed and how it has a drastic affect on sales and careers. Her current artist, for the Esther Diamond series, is Dan Dos Santos, a 5 time Hugo nominee and Chesley winner.

In this interview with Diabolical Plots‘ Carl Slaughter, she provides the inside story on cover art.

CARL SLAUGHTER: You’ve done extensive research on how cover art affects sales figures and author careers. Give us some examples of cover art that tanked sales and delayed careers and some examples of how cover art moved a book off the shelf and fast tracked a career.

Laura Resnick 1 LAURA RESNICK: An editor once cited Barbara Michaels aka Elizabeth Peters to me as an example of a writer whose career was held back for years by bad covers. Peters died last year (peacefully at home, at the age of 85) after a career which included many New York Times bestselling novels. But that success came some 20 years and many well-reviewed books into her career, and there was a noticeable shift in packaging that accompanied her well-deserved success. For years, publishers were giving her muddy, generic covers that conveyed nothing of the tone of her books, and she developed her audience strictly on her own merits via word-of-mouth, with no help at all from her dreadful packaging. Then if you look at the packaging she started getting around the mid-1990s, you can see a definite shift in quality of the covers, which accompanied her rising sales. In particular, the eventual packaging of her Amelia Peabody series (the early books, poorly packaged, were also repackaged with the new look) was a winner, and the series was commercially very successful for years (she was working on another Amelia Peabody book when she died).

In my own case, my Esther Diamond series had a disastrous launch with (among other problems) a hideously inappropriate cover from Luna Books. Esther Diamond is a comedic urban fantasy series. To give you some idea of how off-target that cover for book #1, Disappearing Nightly, was: The year that book was released, I held that cover up for an audience at a workshop on book covers and packaging, and I asked them what kind of book they thought this cover was for. The two audience members who got the most agreement form everyone else? One thought it was a 1970s showbiz memoir, and the other thought it was a thriller about a hooker. When no one looking at an Esther Diamond cover can tell that it’s (1) urban fantasy, (2) comedy, or (3) a series, that represents a very serious cover problem. The book tanked and Luna dumped me (and so did my fourth literary agent,don’t even get me started on agents). Fortunately, DAW Books was willing to take a chance on book #2 of this badly mishandled series. They packaged it wonderfully, revived the series, subsequently acquired and repackaged book #1, we’re about to release book #7, and I’m contracted through at least book #10,of a series that crashed and got dumped after one book because of disastrous packaging at its previous house.

I think Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, aka the “Trueblood” series) is an example of someone who got a boost from good packaging. Harris was a longtime midlist career writer who developed the idea for the Sookie Stackhouse novels in an attempt to use her strengths as a writer to achieve the commercial success which had so far eluded her. (Obviously, she succeeded, becoming a #1 hardcover NYT bestseller with this series.) Ace Books launched the first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, with a very distinctive cover. I remember picking up that book years ago because of the cover (which was impressive packaging, since I don’t read vampire novels). Harris was doing good work on a very commercial project, but the distinctive packaging really helped that series stand out early on.

CARL: Who makes decisions about cover art and who should be making those decisions?

Polterheist LAURA: At large publishing conglomerates (ex. Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, MacMillan, and Simon & Schuster), too often the people making decisions about packaging are unfamiliar with the book or the author’s work,and therefore also unfamiliar with the author’s audience, who are the people the cover needs to attract. I have even been told anecdotes by wearily amused art directors about book covers being directed by senior people in the corporate hierarchy who don’t read books and who have no art or design background whatsoever, but who, for one reason or another, want cover control. To give just one example of how truly absurd the process can get, one art director at a major house told me that for a year or two, most of that company’s major releases had red covers because the Chief Financial Officer’s girlfriend liked red, and he wanted to make her happy.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, depending on just how small a small press is, art direction may be in the hands of one person who is also editor, marketer, publisher, and business manager. This can go well if that person is brilliant at art direction,and badly if he’s not.
Ideally, what you want in your cover artist/illustrator, designer, and/or art director are people who know art and design, know the book or the author’s work, and understand what look attracts the author’s audience. Art directors and cover artists have told me that the more people that get involved in the process, the harder it is to come out of the maelstrom with a good cover. It’s a basic “too many cooks spoil the broth” issue,especially if most of those people don’t know the book and don’t know design.

Which is not to say, however, that no one else’s input is ever valuable. One senior editor who was directing her own imprint, for example, told me about an instance where someone on the publisher’s sales force contacted her to object to a cover, and his advice was probably career-saving for the author (he had good reason to believe that a major retail chain would refuse to carry that cover, and so the package was rethought). On the other hand, the same editor also had numerous incidents of sales reps emphatically offering cover advice on the basis of what would appeal to them,rather than (and in direct opposition to) what would appeal to the audience whom the books in her imprint were aimed at.

CS: Are art directors qualified to make decisions about marketing? Are authors qualified to make decisions about art?

DN Cover DAW LR: Well, “marketing” is a broad term, involving a lot of areas unrelated to the book cover. It is, in essence, the question of how to get lots of people who are likely to enjoy the book to pick it up in the first place.

For the past few decades, book covers (and everything else in the publishing process) tended to be aimed at middlemen,distributors and retailers,rather than at readers. Booksellers, distributors, and head buyers for the major chains are publishers’ customers (particularly big conglomerate publishers). So decisions about manuscript acquisition and cover design have tended to be made with those type of businesses in mind. eBooks and internet shopping are now affecting this process by eliminating some of those layers and elevating the importance of the reader’s reaction to a book cover. Additionally, covers online have to catch the reader’s eye in a much smaller format (thumbnail size, rather than physical book size), which is also affecting design decisions. So the cover world, like the entire book world, is in flux these days.

That said, an art director can package a book brilliantly if she’s a brilliant art director for books, and she can only do a mediocre or poor job if she’s mediocre or poor at packaging books. Additionally, any art director is packaging a lot of books every year, on a tight schedule,and no one is brilliant all the time, for every book, especially when she has limited time to work on it; this is why even companies with mostly good covers nonetheless release some frogs-and-dogs every year.

Authors have typically been omitted from participation in the traditional book cover process at most publishing houses. This is an example of the dismissive contempt that most publishers exercise toward writers, who are usually treated as something between a tedious encumbrance and a mutant sewer rat.

Admittedly, in some cases. omitting the author from the cover process is understandable. There are authors who fixate on irrelevancies (the heroine’s hairstyle isn’t right; the hero is too muscular; the dragon doesn’t really look like that; etc.) or who have One Sole Idea for the cover and are angry at any deviation from it (even if the idea is unworkable or just plain bad).

A book cover is supposed to be an effective advertisement for your book, not a perfectly detailed representation of a scene exactly as it appeared in the author’s head. An author can only be productive in the cover process if she understands that and acts accordingly.

That said, the function of the book cover is to attract the author’s audience (her existing readers and readers who’ll like her work if they can be convinced to pick up and open the book),and who knows the author’s audience better than the author herself, for goodness sake? She is the person who is attracting that audience with her stories, book after book,not some random bystander who has no idea what her audience is interested in! She probably also is her audience, since most writers are writing books they’d like to read.

There are authors who don’t want to be involved in the cover process (though they are increasingly rare). But any author who wants to be involved should be given that chance (and at most publishing houses, is still not allowed that opportunity), because she understands her audience better than anyone else in the publishing process.

CS: How can an author get involved in the art process and ensure their books get good covers – or at least don’t get bad covers – without alienating relationships at the publisher?

UnsympMag LR: Not alienating relationships at the publishing house is a matter of professionalism in all things, not just covers. And, frankly, I’ve worked with a couple of publishers in the past which are so unprofessional and so contemptuous of authors that there’s really no way to get anything done without alienating them. (Also, in retrospect, I don’t regret the instances where I alienated publishing staff in order to protect my books. I regret the few instances where I foolishly backed off on protecting my books in order to try to preserve relationships with publishers; this turned out to be the wrong decision in every instance. When a book is handled badly, sales suffer, and so the relationship is destroyed anyhow,because publishers publish for money, not love, friendship, loyalty, or honor.)

In terms of the cover process, some general practical tips for writers: Inform your editor at the start (and with occasional reminders along the way) that you want to be involved in the cover process. (If you’ve done this before, present examples, so that they can see you actually wind up with good covers when you’re involved.)

Present a shortlist of cover artists (3-6) as suggestions for your cover art; and ask the editor who the publisher is thinking of. Try to establish a dialogue about who will do the cover, because getting the right artist will eliminate a lot of potential problems.

If they’re going to bypass art and go strictly with design (or design and stock photos), then present a package (ex. 4-8) of sample covers that convey the sort of style/tone you think would suit your book, and ask their opinion, feedback, or counter suggestions. They may ignore you but, again, work on establishing a dialogue, on presenting yourself as someone who should be kept in the loop and with whom ideas should be discussed.

Ask to see the artist’s sketches (and you should probably ask fairly often, if it’s a house or editor likely to omit you) or the designer’s early concepts. This is crucial, because this is the stage at which you’ve got the best chance of having your input included,while they’re planning the thing. (Too many writers just wait until they see the final cover and then object; this is way too late to voice an opinion, folks. It’s like saying after the house is built that you’d like the kitchen to be in front, not in back; at that late date, everyone’s just going to ignore you.)

After sketches or concept have been approved, ask to see the preliminary art (an artist will usually do some minor revisions to the art, as requested) or near-final design, which is another stage at which you can make suggestions.

Always be constructive and make suggestions. Just complaining and telling them what you don’t like doesn’t give anyone in the process anything to work with.

If there’s an artist, give him an e-file or Pinterest link (early on, before sketches) with lots of images. Artists are visual people, so don’t bore him with tons of text, show him visuals. I provide cover artists with all sorts of images that represent the “look” of my books, a visual portrayal of the world that’s inside my head, imagery that’s related to the text, pictures and covers that convey the tone I think would suit my cover, etc. For example, for the cover of Unsympathetic Magic, I sent artist Dan Dos Santos loads of images from my research on Vodou; for The Misfortune Cookie, I sent him the photos I’d taken on my research trips to Chinatown and copies of the Chinese calligraphy I’d been researching for the book. If you don’t have direct connection to the artist, then pass this material to him through your editor,and follow up to make sure the editor gave it to him.

Always remember, the final cover is a done deal. If that’s the first time you’re looking at it, it’s too late to change anything. So get into the process early. (However, if you hate the final cover so much you want to kill yourself, then make some design suggestions; they won’t change art at that late date, but they might change design, which is an easier fix. Might, I say.)

CS: Can authors afford to commission their own art? Should they? Can they find free cover art on the Internet, and if so, should they use it?

Vamparazzi LR: Authors are doing this in the self-publishing world,and in many cases, very effectively and successfully. In the traditional publishing world, though, you don’t want to do this. One, your publisher won’t go along with it; two, why on earth would you sign a contract that funnels the majority of the income to a publisher if they aren’t going to pay for the packaging? If you want to do the packaging yourself, then self-publish. (For some examples of great self-published covers, check out some awards sites for “best of” indie and self-published cover art.)

CS: “The original cover art for your romance novels has lovers in passionate embrace. Later covers have a large heart shape and no people or people silhouetted. Why the big change?”
LR: The romance market changed a lot over time, and is still evolving,as all book markets do. The covers of couples passionately embracing (in which the woman is usually half-naked and the man is mostly shirtless) was a trademark look for the genre that was largely developed by an artist named Pino (an Italian immigrant, classically trained artist, and lovely man who passed away a couple of years ago) and Kensington Books (founded by the late Walter Zacharius). The half-naked babes on the covers were popular with the truckers and jobbers who stocked a lot of the wire-rack outlets where mass market paperbacks where sold 30 years ago, and it was a new, glamorous look that became very successful. However, by the 1990s, cloth covers for these books were very popular with readers, many of whom were uncomfortable being teased or smirked at for reading novels with these prurient covers, and the look was becoming less popular. Meanwhile, the superstore phenomenon (ex. Barnes & Noble) was coming to dominate bookselling, and romance novels needed shelf space in those stores as shopping/buying habits changed among readers. A more “bookstore-ish” look became desirable. So publishers gradually started experimenting with romantic looking covers that still visually identified the genre of the book, but without a semi-clad couple actually fornicating right there on the cover.

Some years after that, though, erotica became a big market. And then ebooks came along, and no one actually sees the cover of the book you’re reading on your e-tablet. These are two factors that have led to a portion of the market moving back toward more sexual covers,while other writers and subgenres in romance have adopted more mainstream looks, images that wouldn’t have appeared on a “romance novel” 20 years ago (ex. A beach chair by the ocean; a cafÃ�’ � table; two hands clasped; etc.) So the whole look of the genre keeps changing as the market continues evolving.

CS: I was captivated by the cover art for your Esther Diamond series. Particularly the cover of “Misfortune Cookie.” So exciting, so intriguing, so dramatic, so vivid. It looks a puzzle with pieces for the reader put together. I count at least 4 hands sticking out of that giant fortune cookie. And Esther is portrayed as being perpetually on the move as she solves the case. The cover of “Unsympathetic Magic” is also particularly eye catching. So who is your cover artist? Because, if I don’t succeed as a writer, I could always kidnap them and make a fortune selling their art!

Dopplegangster LR: The Esther Diamond covers are illustrated by the brilliant Dan Dos Santos. He’s a Chesley Award winner, a five-time Hugo Award nominee, and has won or been nominated for numerous other awards for his art. He’s also prolific, so you’ve probably seen his art on numerous other book covers.

DAW Books publishes the Esther Diamond series, and they’ve been terrific about including me in the cover process. We discussed artists early on, and Dan was top pick for each of us. He’s extremely creative with cover images, very imaginative, and he captures a perfect combination of menace, comedy, and sexiness in these covers. I typically review the cover sketches and the preliminary art with the publisher, and we develop a consensus on the feedback that my editor gives him. Dan also communicates directly with me about various specifics or questions. So the cover process for the Esther Diamond novels is a pleasure for me, rather than an exercise in helplessness and frustration, and the results have been consistently excellent.

CS: “Book #7 in the Esther Diamond series, “Abracadaver,” comes out in November. Any more lined up? Will you continue the series indefinitely?”

LR: There are three more unwritten Esther Diamond novels under contract at this time, and I hope to do many more after that. (I’m currently tearing my hair out trying to come up with a title for book #8.)

CS: Any advice to aspiring writers?

RRR LR: The market and the book/publishing world have changed a great deal during the years I’ve been writing professionally, yet I find that the two most common mistakes that aspiring writers make have not changed at all: not writing enough and not educating themselves about the business. And so my advice hasn’t changed, either. It’s still:

1. Write a lot. Practice your craft. Keep writing. And write still more after that. This is a craft, not divinely-inspired magic. It requires practice. Genius does not automatically flow forth from your muse-blessed fingertips. If you don’t expect to play a sonata perfectly the first time you ever sit down at a piano, then why would you expect to write an excellent story or novel the first time you sit down to write one? Talent is wildly romanticized and overrated, and the unglamorous qualities of plain old hard work and perseverance are perpetually underrated.

2. Educate yourself about the writing/publishing business and keep educating yourself. This is a competitive profession and a complex industry. You need to treat it as such if you want to succeed.
CHECK OUT LAURA RESNICK’S ESSAY ON COVER ART:

http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/About%20Writing/Book%20Covers.htm

CHECK OUT LAURA RESNICK’S ESSAYS ON LITERARY AGENTS:

http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/Excerpts/RWRexcerp.htm
http://www.ninc.com/blog/index.php/archives/author-agent-business-model

CHECK OUT LAURA RESNICK’S TESTIMONY ON BREAKING INTO WRITING::

First Book Friday: Laura Resnick

READ EXCERPTS OF LAURA RESNICK’S ESTHER DIAMOND SERIES::

http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/Excerpts/ManMattExcerp.htm#MCexcerpt
http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/Excerpts/UnsympMag.htm#Polterheist

http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/Excerpts/Doppel.htm

LAURA RESNICK’S NONFICTION WRITING::

http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/Other%20Writing/NonFic.htm

LAURA RESNICK’S HOME PAGE::

Carl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

On Unqualifying for SFWA

written by David Steffen

Note: It has been pointed out to me that because I have qualified and joined SFWA previously, I don’t need to qualify again regardless of rule changes. As a result, I could technically join again any time I wish. For me personally it’s more the principle of the thing–becoming eligible for SFWA was a long-term milestone as I started writing, and so being able to join by being grandfathered in doesn’t feel like actually meeting that milestone anymore. Also, regardless of whether I can technically join or not and regardless of whether one agrees with my qualms about being grandfathered in, the 10,000 word minimum affects anyone who hadn’t met the previous guidelines for full membership before the deadline and is still a change that I consider very problematic in both its strategic implications of keeping out writers who excel at the shortest form and practical effects of reducing potential membership for no clear reason.

For a lot of science fiction and fantasy writers trying to lay their claim to fame, becoming eligible to be a member of SFWA is a major milestone to mark their progress, and I was no exception. At the time, to get the full Active membership you had to make 3 story sales paid at least five cents per word and which totalled more than a certain dollar amount (I forget what the exact total was, a few hundred dollars I think) and where each individual sale was worth at least $50. I reached that goal and became eligible with the acceptance of “Marley and Cratchit” to Escape Pod, adding to my prior sales of “Turning Back the Clock” to Bull Spec and “The Infinite Onion” to AE. So, I reached that goal and there was much rejoicing (by me at least). I was able to join, and could go to the SFWA suite at Worldcon 2012 which was a great place to be.

This year SFWA changed their criteria, to up the professional rate to six cents per word, and also to add a minimum word count of your qualifying stories to 10,000 words.

I generally approve of the upping of the professional rate–it needs to go up periodically to have some relation to inflation, and I think that’s really overdue. Yes, it makes it more difficult for magazines to meet the criteria, but this list of markets is a large part of why SF/F has generally higher standards than some other kinds of short story markets.

I don’t approve, though, of the 10,000 word limit. Presumably there was a specific reason–but what is that reason? It seems to me that this is a strategy specifically designed to keep flash fiction from counting toward membership. I don’t know if this is another one of those conversations where some older members of the organization think that SFWA membership should be kept only to those who have writing as their only job. Could you do that? Sure. But the organization would be small and much more irrelevant, and would explicitly exclude a whole ton of award winning authors like Ken Liu who have day jobs. Who does that benefit exactly?

So, who does this benefit,changing the rules so that flash fiction is less important? I’m not the only writer whose most sales are flash fiction. Is it because the people prompting the rule change don’t understand the form? I’ll grant you, you can’t have a full complicated plot in a flash story like you can in a longer story, but flash fiction has its own appeal that other kinds of fiction can’t do well. Anecdotally, I’ve heard speculation that this is to keep some well-paying drabble (100 word story) sales from getting you to membership, but if you can sell a drabble for $50 you are my hero and I want to pick your brain. I haven’t seen any public statements about why SFWA’s organizers thought this was a worthwhile change.

As a result of this change, I no longer qualify for SFWA membership. I have 4 individual sales, but they only add up to 9180 words. So I’d need to make at least one sale of 920 words which makes at least $50. This frustrates me, for me and other flash writers like me to be excluded for no explained reason when we meet the other criteria.

I will note as well that the rules on the SFWA website say “Three paid sales of different works of fiction (such as three separate short stories) totaling a minimum of 10,000 words to Qualifying Professional Markets”. Note that it says “three” not “three or more. Which, if that’s what was actually meant, would limit flash sales even more, because getting 10 professional 1000-word story sales wouldn’t count to get the 10,000 if you can only pick 3 of them to count. I’ve been told by members of SFWA that the actual bylaws say “three or more”, which is a relief because then I’d have even further to go–then I would only be able to count 3 of those sales to count 8200 words and I’ve just have to sell longer stories. One story of 2800 words or 2 stories that total 4100 words between them. The trouble with the website being wrong is that it’s the source that newbie writers are going to use to determine whether they should apply or not–so even though the bylaws are the source, this is the public side of it. Hopefully they’ll get the website updated soon.

And I hope that they repeal the 10,000 word minimum. At the very least, I’d like to hear why they think flash fiction isn’t valuable to the SF community, or what other strategy they might have behind this change–I don’t think such a thing would make me happy, exactly, but then we could have a discussion about the topic at the core of this rather than just complaining about the symptom.

In the meantime, I guess there’s nothing to do for it but to consider “Requalifying for SFWA” as a new milestone to reach. Onward and upward!

“The Original Blue Fairy is a Cruel Monster” or “My Review of The Adventures of Pinocchio”

written by David Steffen

We all know how the story of Pinocchio goes. Like most people, I watched Disney’s version of Pinocchio when I was a kid, and when I later learned that it was based on an older story (as most of Disney’s movies, especially their older ones, are) I assumed that Disney made some adaptations to make it into a modern children’s film–modernizing the language, trimming meandering plotlines. I knew that Disney had made drastic changes to the endings of the stories based on Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales because otherwise there’s just no way you could market them to a modern kid’s audience. But I had never heard anyone talk about how faithful their adaptation of C. Collodi’s Adventures of Pinocchio was.

I was working on a story loosely inspired by Pinocchio, and so to understand my source material as completely as possible, I wanted to read the original for a basis of comparison. I was quite surprised by what I found there. In particular, the character that Disney based their Blue Fairy character on.

I’ll give some general thoughts about the story first, and then will talk about the fairy in the section titled “The Original Blue Fairy is a Cruel Monster”. I’m not going to bother avoiding spoilers because the movie most people are familiar with is 73 years old, and the original book is 130 years old.

The Adventures of Pinocchio

There are a lot of details that might surprise someone who guesses that the Disney version is a faithful adaptation, including:

1. The Fairy does not make Pinocchio alive
He just is alive for no reason, speaking even before he has been fully carved from a block of wood.

2. The Talking Cricket (the inspiration for Jiminy Cricket) is killed by Pinocchio in the very scene in which he appears:

“Let me tell you, for your own good, Pinocchio,” said the Talking Cricket in his calm voice, “that those who follow that trade always end up in the hospital or in prison.”

“Careful, ugly Cricket! If you make me angry, you’ll be sorry!”

“Poor Pinocchio, I am sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a Marionette and, what is much worse, you have a wooden head.”

At these last words, Pinocchio jumped up in a fury, took a hammer from the bench, and threw it with all his strength at the Talking Cricket.

Perhaps he did not think he would strike it. But, sad to relate, my dear children, he did hit the Cricket, straight on its head.

With a last weak “cri-cri-cri” the poor Cricket fell from the wall, dead!

I found this darkly hilarious, more so for the complete unexpectedness of it.

3. In the absence of the Talking Cricket, many other random bystanders serve the role of being Pinocchio’s moral compass.
This includes the Fairy herself, a Blackbird, the Ghost of the Talking Cricket, a Parrot, a Pigeon, a Donkey, and somehow the Talking Cricket again (having reappeared alive). It’s clearly a story to teach morals and really bludgeons you over the head with the format at every opportunity.

4. Geppetto has quite a temper (at the beginning of the story)
I normally think of Geppetto as a kind, sweet, old man, perhaps out of his area of expertise in parenting but an entirely benevolent character. In the original, though, he has a vicious temper and threatens to thrash Pinocchio at the slightest provocation at times.

5. Pinocchio is a mean-spirited beast(at the beginning of the story)
In the Disney movie Pinocchio is naive and easily tempted, but is generally a good person who is just misguided. The Pinocchio in the book is a mean-spirited creature who does mean things out of spite and for entertainment only

6. The escape from the belly of the Shark is super easy
Instead of Monstro the whale, the original story has a giant Shark that swallows Geppetto. When Pinocchio gets swallowed too, he finds his father where he’s been eating raw fish for two years in the belly, living in candlelight from candles salvaged from a swallowed shipwreck. Yes, TWO YEARS of eating raw fish. When Pinocchio gets there, they decide to find a way out. Apparently the giant Shark has asthma and so must breathe with its mouth open while it sleeps. Pinocchio and Geppetto literally just walk out of its open mouth and meet no resistance from the sleeping monster–there is no fire to make it sneeze as in the movie. Which really leads one to wonder–why didn’t Geppetto just walk out on his own sometime in the last two years?

7. The Fairy is very different (see the next section)

The Original Blue Fairy is a Cruel Monster

Now on to the really fun part–the reveal of what a psychotic, manipulative, pathological liar the Blue Fairy’s original incarnation was.

In the Disney movie, the Blue Fairy is about as benevolent of a character as you’re likely to find. She is basically an incarnation of kindness and love. She is the one that makes both the launching of the plot and the final climax possible. At the beginning, the lonely carpenter Geppetto wishes upon a star that his newly made marionette could become a real boy. While he sleeps the Blue Fairy visits the workshop and grants this wish, after a fashion. He has the spark of life, can act and think for himself, but he is still a wooden marionette as well. She tells him that if he can be a good boy and can listen to his conscience, then she will really make him a real boy. She sees him again later after he’s done some things wrong and gotten himself trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation, and she lets him go free with a warning that she won’t bail him out again. At the end of the movie, after Pinocchio has sacrificed himself selflessly to save his father’s life on several occasions and has learned virtue and truth and all that jazz, the Blue Fairy shows up again and makes good on her promise and makes him into a real boy. Hooray! The End.

In the book, the fairy is known as the Girl with Azure Hair, or the Maiden with Azure Hair, or in a couple scenes the Goat with Azure Hair, or sometimes just the Fairy. At the best of times, the most positive thing I can say about her is that she can occasionally act without malevolence. At the worst of times, she is a cruel, spiteful, monster who has all of the faults that she blames Pinocchio for having and others besides.

Pinocchio first meets her when he is running away from two con-men in the guise of Assassins who want to take the gold coins that Pinocchio has in his posession. Fleeing from the Assassins in the woods he comes across a cottage. He bangs on the door until the Girl with Azure Hair (at this point quite a young girl) answers at the window and this exchange occurs:

“No one lives in this house. Everyone is dead.”

“Won’t you, at least, open the door for me?” cried Pinocchio in a beseeching voice.

“I also am dead.”

“Dead? What are you doing at the window, then?”

“I am waiting for the coffin to take me away.”

And then she shuts the window on him. Because she won’t let him in the house, the Assassins catch him, beat him, try to stab him, and hang him by the neck because Pinocchio is holding the gold coins under his tongue and they can’t pry his mouth open. They get bored waiting for him to suffocate several hours later and promise to come back the next day to collect the coins from his dead body. The Fairy eventual wanders out of the house, has him cut down from the rope, and he is eternally grateful to her for saving his life even though she was the one who refused to help him when he was in trouble in the first place. He never questions why she claimed she was dead, and she never offers an explanation. I’m really not sure where Collodi was going with that brief conversation–is she supposed to be suicidal? Is it just supposed to be some amusing nonsense in place for no reason and he assumed children would laugh and not try to figure out the meaning? Is there some kind of meaning that is just eluding me because of the difference in time period and culture from where I’m reading it? I really don’t know. But this is not where it ends.

They decide after this exchange that they shall be brother and sister, and so they play childhood games with each other and have fun for a time. This is about the most positive Pinocchio’s relationship with the Fairy gets. The Fairy sends for Geppetto to come live with her and Pinocchio in the Fairy’s house, but Pinocchio is so overjoyed at this happiness that he asks to run to his hometown to find his father and tell him the good news himself. The Fairy agrees, with a warning that he has to behave. And of course, Pinocchio doesn’t behave, gets distracted, ends up having all of his gold coins stolen by the con-men who had earlier tried to murder him and in the backwards Town of the Simple Simons ends up getting thrown in jail for several months, more adventures ensue, and eventually he makes his way back to the Fairy’s house after much times has passed.

The little house was no longer there. In its place lay a small marble slab, which bore this sad inscription:

     HERE LIES
     THE LOVELY FAIRY WITH AZURE HAIR
     WHO DIED OF GRIEF
     WHEN ABANDONED BY
     HER LITTLE BROTHER PINOCCHIO

So, as far as we know at this point, the Fairy is well and truly dead, and so Pinocchio is very, very sad about the death of his sister and guilty about his role in her death. I would’ve thought that his grief would be dampened at least a little bit by the fact that she was so spiteful as to have apparently commissioned a stonecutter to craft such a spiteful accusatory epitaph for her tombstone.

But then, after her second claim of death (don’t forget the first one made on their first meeting) Pinocchio happens across her again in his ramblings. Pinocchio is at a place with very hard workers and is begging for food from them, but refuses to work for the food. Finally a woman comes along and she gives him water freely and offers him food if he will carry her water jugs. He does agree for the promise of a feast, and then he realizes its the Fairy all grown up (I think this may be because he is an unaging marionette and she is just growing up at a normal pace, though I had at first thought that this is just another piece of dream logic). Since she’s older than him now, she takes the role of mother figure to him (which adds a bit of a weird psychological component in a single character sister-turned-mother). This exchange occurs:

“Tell me, little Mother, it isn’t true that you are dead, is it?”

“It doesn’t seem so,” answered the Fairy, smiling.

“If you only knew how I suffered and how I wept when I read ‘Here lies,'”

“I know it, and for that I have forgiven you. The depth of your sorrow made me see that you have a kind heart. There is always hope for boys with hearts such as yours, though they may often be very mischievous. This is the reason why I have come so far to look for you. From now on, I’ll be your own little mother.”

“Oh! How lovely!” cried Pinocchio, jumping with joy.

“You will obey me always and do as I wish?”

“Gladly, very gladly, more than gladly!”

She merely seems amused when he points out that she’s still alive after that accusatory epitaph. She deigns to forgive him, but makes no mention of needing forgiveness herself for inflicting such grief upon the puppet-boy, and in such a spiteful way. She not only moved out of the house she’d been living in, after all, but had it torn to the ground, laid a marble tombstone (which couldn’t have been cheap) and paid to have a spiteful accusatory epitaph carved into it. When she decides to teach a lesson she goes all out!

She claims to have searched for him but as far as I could tell he just happened to find her, not the other way around.

And his promise to obey here and do as she wishes was just chilling to me considering what she’s shown herself capable of. She promises that he will become a real boy if he proves he deserves it (note that she doesn’t say she will do it for him, only that it will happen).

She even picks a day for it to happen, but the day before that Pinocchio gets tempted off to the Land of Toys, where he gets turned into a donkey because he is such a lazy layabout. He gets sold off to a circus where he is forced to perform tricks for crowds, and he sees the Fairy in the audience, with a medallion with a picture of himself carved into it. But she leaves him to his captivity.

Some time later, after he has returned to marionette form, and ends up out in the ocean, he spots a Goat with Azure Hair on an island. She beckons for him, but the terrible giant Shark (the origin of Monstro the whale) surfaces. She beckons him yet more, and even reaches out to him and just misses him before the Shark swallows him up. If it were anyone but this Fairy I might believe the “almost” of the helping him was an honest try and fail, but I don’t trust her at this point. And, granted, Geppetto is in the belly of the Shark and Pinocchio is able to rescue him there, but instead of just sending Pinocchio in after she could’ve just helped Geppetto herself. She does have magic, after all. The Fairy can shapeshift, and what animal does she turn into to save Pinocchio from a shark attack? A goat. A freaking goat. Seriously.

So Pinocchio rescues Geppetto from the belly of the Shark, and eventually they make their way home. Pinocchio earns the value of hard work and works to make some money which he plans to spend on a nice suit so that his father can see how nice he looks. On his way he runs into someone who had previously worked for the Fairy and they talk:

“My dear Pinocchio, the Fairy is lying ill in a hospital.”

“In a hospital?”

“Yes, indeed. She has been stricken with trouble and illness, and she hasn’t a penny left with which to buy a bite of bread.”

He sends the money he’d saved with her servant to help her out. He returns home and:

After that he went to bed and fell asleep. As he slept, he dreamed of his Fairy, beautiful, smiling, and happy, who kissed him and said to him, “Bravo, Pinocchio! In reward for your kind heart, I forgive you for all your old mischief. Boys who love and take good care of their parents when they are old and sick, deserve praise even though they may not be held up as models of obedience and good behavior. Keep on doing so well, and you will be happy.”

At that very moment, Pinocchio awoke and opened wide his eyes.

What was his surprise and his joy when, on looking himself over, he saw that he was no longer a Marionette, but that he had become a real live boy! He looked all about him and instead of the usual walls of straw, he found himself in a beautifully furnished little room, the prettiest he had ever seen. In a twinkling, he jumped down from his bed to look on the chair standing near. There, he found a new suit, a new hat, and a pair of shoes.

As soon as he was dressed, he put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a little leather purse on which were written the following words:

     The Fairy with Azure Hair returns
     fifty pennies to her dear Pinocchio
     with many thanks for his kind heart.

The Marionette opened the purse to find the money, and behold,there were fifty gold coins!

Pinocchio ran to the mirror. He hardly recognized himself. The bright face of a tall boy looked at him with wide-awake blue eyes, dark brown hair and happy, smiling lips.

He never hears news of the Fairy’s but if she really was sick and had not even enough money to buy herself bread, I think that the implication is that she has claimed to have died. But of course, this is the third time that she’s claimed death in the story, and the other two proved to be complete fabrications (including the elaborate fabrication involving the marble tombstone) so I’m sure she’s still living out there somewhere and will return at some point to plague Pinocchio.

And although there might be some implication that she is the one that makes him into a boy, I am skeptical of that too. It seemed like she just had knowledge about what it took to become a real boy and she shared that knowledge but did not actually cause anything.

Picking Apart “The Cold Equations”

written by David Steffen

“The Cold Equations” is a science fiction short story written by Tom Godwin, published in Astounding Magazine in 1954. It’s looked upon by many as a classic, and one of those old defining SF stories that defined new tropes that have become cliches in the times since then. I’ve heard it mentioned most often by some critiquers who might say something like “This is the Cold Equations in a fantasy world” or some such thing. And I’m not going to avoid spoilers in this, since it is a 60-year old story. A while back I heard the story for the first time on the Drabblecast, so it is still fresh in my mind.

The story takes place on an emergency dispatch ship headed for a colony planet with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. Our protagonist finds a stowaway on board his ship, a teenage girl who has done this to visit her brother on the colony planet. This is a major problem because these runs are planned with just enough fuel to safely reach their destination. She thought that she would only get fined for sneaking on, but punishment for stowing away is death, to be sucked out of the airlock. Most of the time the stowaways are just selfish and don’t care about anyone, but this girl is just naive. This practice ensures the safe arrival of the mission. The pilot explains this to the girl. they speak to the colony ahead, and she gets to talk to her brother. In the end, though, there’s nothing to do about it. She walks willingly into the airlock and lets herself be killed, and that’s the end. The “Cold Equations” in the title are the physics equations to calculate the effect of mass on fuel consumption. It’s apparently meant to be a commentary on the coldness of reasoning that would be necessary for space travel.

And that’s an interesting topic, but in my opinion the premise has so many monumental flaws that it falls apart on the least inspection. I had heard the general premise before and was expecting to feel for the story, but when I listened to the particulars I was so frustrated that this situation could exist, and that the people in this situation are so incredibly stupid, that I just couldn’t buy into it, emotionally or intellectually.

The problems:

1. The story repeatedly stated that there was only enough fuel with no margin, but the girl isn’t discovered until the ship is going at cruising speed. If the story’s repeated statements are true, then they should already be doomed.

2. A space freight system with no margin for error is idiotic. What if a component fails or works less efficiently? What if the pilot gains a little weight? Any tiny thing happening wrong, and the whole mission destroys the ship, kills the pilot, and maybe destroys the colony when the ship crashes. Those are steep enough consequences that it would be worth putting in some margin for error. At LEAST enough for one extra person aboard. Unless, of course, the people running this space freight system actually like to kill people for no good reason… but that’s not the sense I get from the story details.

3. Why doesn’t the spaceport have higher security? I mean, stowing away is a common enough crime that there is an execution law for it! You know how you could take care of that? Point a damned video camera at the entrance to the ship and have somebody (person or AI) watching it whenever that entrance is open. Arrest any unauthorized person who passes through. Problem solved, without having to murder anyone.

4. If you’re really only off by a tiny amount in the fuel, there should be other maneuvers that would allow you to salvage. Such as, instead of landing on the surface you put the ship in orbit. Or you intentionally overshoot the planet and allow one of their smaller vessels to chase after and catch you.

5. Have automated flights with no passenger entry.

6. The only problem in this situation is the excess mass. Try to get rid of some mass, for the love of Pete! They have ample time to do this, but they do not even make a token effort. The girl even chooses to die early, so they killed her before the last minute. The girl starts to write a note for her brother on PENCIL AND PAPER. What is a pencil and paper doing on this ship at all, which has long distance communications and a computer? Okay, sure, this is an older time and maybe they weren’t thinking of computers in the same way, but the communications here were reliable enough that even if the computer were not capable of storage you could just dictate your notes to someone on a planet to record for you–if fuel is that precious, that would be a preferrable way. The presence of pencil and paper just served to underscore all the logical problems in this supposedly logical story.
Here are some things they could try to get rid of mass while keeping the girl alive.
–Throw away your pencils and paper!!!
–Shave their heads
–Strip naked and throw out any spare clothes
–Dump any comfort items like seats, seat cushions, pillows, blankets.
–Dump any food that’s not strictly necessary to survive this trip.
–Remove and dump any components of the ship that are not necessary like covers over maintenance hatches.
–Dump any water that’s not strictly necessary to survive this trip.
–Dump some small percentage of the medicines. This is a lifesaving trip, of course, but the life of the stowaway should be considered as saving a life as well. Particularly medicines that aren’t strictly life-saving, if any.
–Force yourselves to throw up, and flush the vomit.
–If there’s anything on the ship with a laxative or diuretic effect, use it! If not, just urinate as much as you can manage. And flush all that wasted mass down the toilet.
–Lose any other body fluids you can manage–blood, sweat, semen, snot.
–Assuming there are ways to stop the bleeding, amputate one or both of her legs, one or both of her arms, other parts not necessary for survival (there are plenty of them) such as earlobes, nose, breasts. This is all especially true if this future has quality replacement parts for any of these things (especially the legs since they are quite heavy). For each of these parts, she needs to ask herself whether she would rather live without that part or die with it. Morbid, yes, but fitting in the theme of cold equations this would allow a choice.
–Again assuming there are ways to stop the bleeding, and also assuming these parts are not needed to operate the ship, the pilot could also consider amputating parts of himself not necessary for survival. For each of these parts, he needs to ask himself whether he would rather live without that part or kill this teenage girl.

Interview: Literary Agent Amy Boggs

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

Literary agent Amy Boggs is a sci-fi/fantasy geek who has been professionally geeking out over books at Donald Maass agency since 2009. She specializes in speculative fiction and is especially interested in high fantasy, urban fantasy, steampunk (and its variations), YA, MG, and alternate history.

Her recent books include: Tom Pollock’s Our Lady of the Streets, the final book in the Skyscraper Throne series (urban fantasy); Thea Harrison’s Knight’s Honor, book #7 in the Elder Races series (paranormal romance); Jacey Bedford’s Empire of Dust, the first in space opera series.

CARL SLAUGHTER: Why get into agenting? Rather than writing or editing, or marketing or publicity, or publishing.

AMY BOGGS: I knew I wanted to get into the agenting side of the business after interning at an agency my sophomore year at college. Right out of college, I would have been very happy to have a job that touched publishing in any way, so I could have spent time in any division of a publishing house, but I knew agenting was my end goal because it combines many of my favorite things about the book business. You brainstorm with your authors and help them revise and negotiate fair contracts and fight bad covers and talk them into good covers they don’t particularly like and tell everyone you can about their fabulous books. I work solely for the author, because what benefits the author benefits the agency and me. I like that my job is purely championing my authors and their work.

How did you know as early as college that you wanted to be a literary agent?

Vassar College’s Career Development Office had a weekly newsletter they left in our mailboxes, and one day there was a notice for an internship at a literary agency. I had a vague idea of what agents did and thought it would be good experience. Once I got on the job, I knew it was what I wanted to do in my future.

How did you rise from intern to agent so quickly?

Did I? I think agent careers reflect author careers in that you can’t really say there is a typical timeline they’re supposed to follow. This varies by the agency, of course, but I did my first agency internship in 2005 and then interned at DMLA in 2008 (with jobs at two magazines in between) and then was hired as an agency assistant in 2009. Eight months later I found a brilliant author in my boss’s queries and he thought I should be the one to take him on. Two months later I signed my next client, and five months later I sold a three-book deal. I don’t know if that’s quick or slow or typical, but it happened very organically. I do know that I’m fortunate to work at an agency that encouraged my growth and has a few decades of experience to back me up.

Why so keen on sci-fi/fantasy?

I’ve always loved it. When I was three, I was obsessed with Scooby-Doo. Bruce Coville was my childhood. My pre-teen self couldn’t get enough of Unsolved Mysteries, but only the segments with aliens, UFOs, ghosts, and supernatural critters. The Princess Bride was my family’s first DVD. I played Legend of Zelda and read Harry Potter and wrote portal fantasy all through middle and high school. I’m not entirely sure why; I just find other worlds more interesting, and a better avenue for exploring the quandaries on our own world. Perhaps I’m the opposite of Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy; my mind works mostly in metaphors.

How do you size up whether an author is a good fit for you and a good fit for your agency?

99% of it is the manuscript; can’t do anything without a good manuscript. 1% is whether or not the author is a jerk. I have lots of authors and lots of excellent manuscripts coming my way and only a finite amount of time, so I’d prefer to spend it with cool people and not jerks. How do I determine if someone is a jerk? Well, if they’ve ever seriously blogged things like “I’m not racist, butÃ¢â‚¬ �” or “I just happen to read only male authors.” then chances are I’m not the right agent for them.

When you read a manuscript, how do you tell when you’ve got a winner? Characters, plot, writing style? Current market? Or do you listen to your instinct?

All of the above. Intriguing characters fall flat with a monotone writing style, no amount of exciting plot can make up for characters that aren’t worth following, all the elements have to work together. All of those have to be doubly unique and amazing if it’s in a subgenre that’s recently been hot and now everyone’s sick of it. And instinct is really just a combination of all this and having read enough to know when something stands out. There is nothing quite like it when you’ve read 100 queries that day and one of them makes you sit up in your chair.

Do you get most of your new clients over the transom, through networking, or at conventions and workshop?

70% of my clients came to me through my queries. The rest are from recommendations from co-workers, clients, and even one from my mom (she is a children’s bookseller, so she knows her stuff).

How many manuscripts a year do you consider and what percentage do you accept?

I actually don’t have those numbers; when I check a manuscript off my list to read, I literally delete it off the list! But I would guess I consider about 100 manuscripts a year, and I end up signing about 2% of those. I wouldn’t say I accept them; when an agent offers representation, they are offering to partner with the author. So really what happens is both agent and author agree to a partnership.

Do you work with authors on revising?

Yes. I am pickier about the amount of revision I’m willing to take on (more clients equals less time for revising debut manuscripts), but I always want a manuscript to be as perfect as both the author and I can make it before it goes to editors.

Do you get involved on the publicity/marketing end?

I help where I can, but I am not a publicist. That’s a position that requires a particular set of skills, skills acquired over a very long career.

If you take on a new client, what kind of productivity do you expect? How many books a year?

That depends entirely on the client and the genre(s) they write in. In romance, anything less than one book a year isn’t enough. In literary fiction, one book every five years isn’t far out there. What I really want is for my authors not to feel overwhelmed and pushed into delivering inferior books. So far that hasn’t happened; publishing is more accommodating than one might fear.

Do you prefer an author stick with a series? Are stand alones trickier commercially? Or does it matter?

Again, depends on the author and genre(s). And really, it’s not about my preference, but what I advise to the author. It is their career and it is my job to make sure they are well-informed so that regardless of the choices they make, they won’t be sideswiped by the outcome.

Any subgenres you can’t get enough of? Any you get too much of?

High fantasy. Richly built, other-world high fantasy with fantastic characters I want to follow forever, like N.K. Jemisin, Megan Whalen Turner, Scott Lynch, Ellen Kushner. Most of the fantasy I get is tied to our world (historical, contemporary, urban, steampunk) and those are lovely, but I want more high fantasy. And it’s not so much that I get too much of any subgenre, but that I get things typical of a subgenre. Like portal fantasy where the protagonist is mystically taken to another land and the plot is their quest to get home. I want something new, regardless of subgenre.

What are the most common misconceptions new writers have about finding and working with literary agents?

1. Agents are gatekeepers. As cool and ominous as that sounds, it’s not true. An agent’s job isn’t to keep people out, it’s to find those they have the time and ability to help get published. Like I said above, it’s a partnership. Agents put out their information to say they’re looking for authors to partner with, writers pick which agents they want to reach out to partner with, agents decide which of those writers they think they could make a good partnership with, and writers decide whether or not they want to partner with the agent who offers. I know from a querying author’s perspective it can seem like agents have all the power here, but the thing is, we’re nothing without authors.

2. After you get an agent, things get easier. Ha. If only. No matter what level you’re at as an author, things are hard. Even that beloved author of multiple series has that major newspaper that trashes each book and faces the same blank page when they go to write their next book. It’s always hard, just different kinds of hard.

What are the most common manuscript mistakes new writers make?

1. Emulating books that aren’t debuts published within the last five years. Writing changes with society and readers have continually changing expectations for debut novels. Imitating Tolkien in a world that has had Tolkien’s books for 77 years is like trying to get people to invest in your new invention “the zipper.” We’ve already got that. Show us something new.

2. Transcribing literally what published novelists do subtly. I think this is why I get so many queries that start with the protagonist telling you the daily nuances of their life or a prologue that goes into detail about the world the book is set in. Novelists often get this information across subtly over the course of a novel, and by the end a reader knows ever detail intimately, so the impulse to start a book by describing the details is an understandable one. It’s just one that must be fought.

3. Going with the path of least resistance in writing. Writing is not easy, and so when plotting along, it’s tempting to go with the first thing that comes to mind. Often, however, the first thing to come to mind is something already seen in other books. It’s too easy to let inspiration become imitation become a clichÃ�’ �. Author Kate Brauning had a recent post about how she comes up with fresh ideas with “The Rule of Ten.” I think it’s utterly brilliant and challenges writers to question their gut.

Advice to new writers?

Be daring and be true. It will come across in your work.

Book Review: Speaker for the Dead

written by David Steffen

Speaker for the Dead is the sequel to Ender’s Game. Ender’s Game was first a short story and then was expanded to a novel, and just last year was made into a movie. I reviewed the novel and the movie in a previous article. As usual I will try to avoid spoilers for the story being reviewed, but I’m not even going to try to avoid spoilers for Ender’s Game, so if you don’t want to find out some of what happens in that book then go read it and come back.

Background

Three thousand years have passed since the events of Ender’s Game. With the buggers now apparently extinct, humanity has colonized the galaxy unopposed, a hundred worlds all connected together and governed via their ansible connection that allows instantaneous communication across unlimited distances even though the movement of matter between stars is still limited by the speed of light.

The book The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, which is written by someone the general public knows only as the Speaker for the Dead has told the story of the buggers in a way that captured the empathy of the general public so that by the time of this story everyone laments the loss of this alien intelligence and condemns Ender the Xenocide. The book has gained such popularity to as to spawn its own religion in which people who call themselves Speaker for the Dead respond to requests to illuminate in unvarnished fashion the life of a person. The Speaker for the Dead not only tells of the actions of the deceased, both good and bad, he also explains the reasons those actions were taken as best he can. This goes against the custom of not speaking ill of the dead, and so can make many people uncomfortable, but it’s meant to be as honest a story of the deceased as can be told because to tell of only the good or only the bad of a person’s life is like a second death for the person to withhold the telling of part of that life. This movement gains such a following that over three thousand years it has become its own religion.

Little does anyone know, let alone the adherents of the religion, that Ender Wiggin was also the one who wrote The Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Not only that, but he is still alive, because he and his sister Valentine have spent most of the last three thousand years in the time-slowing relativistic speeds of interstellar travel as Ender speaks for the dead and his sister shares her political views through the continued existence of her Demosthenes alias that she established in the first book.

All of that is little but backstory, just the minimum necessary to kind of get a grasp where the book starts. On a Catholic colony world a new intelligent alien species has been discovered, a species of small creatures that look like pigs and so are nicknamed “piggies”, the first to appear since the buggers. The Starways Congress, which control the ansible network between the hundred worlds, has strict limitations in place to control interaction with new intelligent alien species that are all centered around not contaminating the alien culture with human influences while learning as much as possible about them. These limitations make the quest for knowledge extremely difficult, but violation of them could be punished by means as serious as cutting the colony off from outside supplies and communication. After decades of work, very little is known about them, not even their basic social structure or reproductive methods.

One day, with no warning, one of the researchers tasked with working with the piggies is found dead, having been tortured. The young xenobiologist calls for a Speaker for the Dead to come speak for the researcher, and Ender Wiggin answers the call. The colony had previously been out of his reach because its Catholic license prohibited non-Catholics from visiting without reason, but as an invited Speaker for the Dead he could finally go and see the new intelligent species himself, to make up for the near-extinction of the buggers. I say “near-extinction” because unbeknownst to anyone else, he carries with him the larva of a bugger Hive Queen which can repopulate the species.

The travel to Lusitania to speak for the dead takes just two weeks from Ender’s point of view, but takes twenty-two years from the colony’s point of view. Novinha has married and had a handful of children since then, and has changed much since the message that Ender received. She rescinded her request for a Speaker less than a week after she made it, but two of her children have made requests in the meantime.

Review

I thought this book was very good, and made a very good followup for anyone who liked the first one. Again the emphasis is on the power of empathy. Ender Wiggin is an extraordinary human being because he has an extraordinary proficiency for empathy, both towards his fellow human beings and for creatures of different species. This makes him the ideal ambassador for dealing with new intelligent species. My favorite aspect of the book is gradual reveal of how the piggies’ social structures and stages of life work together to form the society. It’s a master craft of speculative work to put together something that is so foreign, but which can be understood, and which has the complete feeling that a real ecosystem has while being novel enough to be interesting.

The characters of the book are another strong point. particularly Novinha and her children. Their family is terribly damaged from a net of lies that has affected everything that has happened to them over the past twenty-two years. When Ender left the family didn’t exist yet, and now Ender’s first thing to do is to try to interact with the family to discover what he needs to discover to be able to speak for the dead. All tied up with the fate of the family is the interactions with the piggies, which I found absolutely fascinating in every conversation.

And just the basic concept of Speaker for the Dead I found incredibly alluring. I don’t know how I would feel if someone spoke that way about one of my dead relatives, to hear unvarnished truth about the wrongs they committed on other people but while trying to understand what motivated them to do these things. But the book never claims that the reveal is a pleasant experience, but after the reveal people do typically find a measure of peace in understanding the ones they loved better than they ever had before. It does make me wonder how Ender would speak of, say, a pedophile. I’m not sure how he could spin that in a way that people could empathize with. But that small wrinkle aside, I really thought it was alluring.

Conclusion

I would highly recommend this book to any SF fan. I would also recommend reading Ender’s Game first, because even though it’s not strictly necessary it would help to see that story to understand the potential for destruction in the ability to empathize, while this book focuses on the potential for creation and healing in the same.

I have not read any books in this series besides these two. I have heard from a couple people that these two are the only ones that really stand out as great works. Any opinions on that, dear reader? Are there any others that you’ve read that you found very valuable?

Interview: Nancy Kress

editor’s note: We interviewed Nancy Kress in 2009–feel free to check that interview out as well.

Nancy Kress is an award winning author, Asimov’s regular, and workshop instructor. She authors a book in Writer’s Digest‘s “Write Great Fiction” series and was a columnist for Writer’s Digest. Here she offers how-to insights into character development.

CARL SLAUGHTER: Humans are complicated. How does a writer know when to develop a character through personality, feelings, experiences, biochemical makeup, relationships, circumstances, motives? When to emphasis which aspect of a person? Are certain aspects of a character inherently more useful for storytelling?

NANCY KRESS: That’s a complicated question! The most useful aspect of a character for story-telling purposes is motive: What does this person want and why? That’s what drives plot. A character’s personality will determine how he tries to get what he wants (earning it, stealing it, getting someone else to provide it, etc.) and how he handles frustration along the way. The character’s prior “experiences” (otherwise known as backstory) are good for the writer to know in order to provide the character with the feelings, relationships, and reactions that will make him vivid to the reader. Each of these elements is important.

How to know when to take the reader into the character’s head versus letting the character express themselves versus letting the reader discern through the character’s actions?

What feels natural? If it’s natural for this particular character in this particular situation to express his feelings directly through dialogue, let him do it. If his actions make his feelings clear (“James hurled the frying pan at Pamela”), then do that. If your character is inarticulate or has no one around to express to, then take us into his thoughts. The biggest mistake I see in student writing is not going deeply enough into a character’s point of view.

How to determine whether a character should evolve, devolve, or remain flat? Do you start with a character who is predetermined to evolve/devolve, or do you build a plot and let the plot determine whether the character should evolve/devolve?

The latter. I do believe that nearly all protagonists should change in some way , after all, if the events of the story don’t affect him, why should they affect the reader? How he will change is something I often don’t know until I’m about halfway through the book. Then I must go back on rewrite and set up the foreshadowing that makes it believable that this character can and will change in that specific way.

When to use sinister character versus victim/hero and when to give every character a legitimate motive and a compelling case?

Always. Every character must be believably motivated, and that includes the villain (sinister or not). When characters do things not from their own reasons but because the plot requires it, the whole story collapses. Their reasons may be 180 degrees away from objective reality (“I know that I’m Napoleon reincarnated”), but the writer still must convince us that the character believes it.

How to integrate premise, plot, and theme into character development.

Premise is the situation the character finds himself in, and it should appear fairly early on in the narrative. Plot is how he deals with that situation, which in turn is determined by his character. For example, Luke Skywalker in STAR WARS finds a hologram of Princess Leia begging for help from someone named Obi-Wan. Another boy might have shrugged and erased the holo, or tried to sell R2D2 on eBay, or whatever. Because of Luke’s personal character (plucky, curious, bored to death on Tatooine), he goes looking for this Obi-Wan, and the plot is off and running.

Do we really need to know that a character wears a goatee, listens to Bach, uses standard language instead of colloquialisms, and prefers omelet over scrambled? How does a character’s appearance or lifestyle help the reader understand and appreciate the story?

All those things can help readers (1) visualize the character, (2) learn something about his socioeconomic background, and (3) identify with him (or not, if that’s what the writer wants). People form first impressions of other people in seconds, and those impressions are remarkably sturdy. Use details to make sure we have the first impression of your protagonist that you want us to have.

Most/least useful strategies for character interaction?

The most useful: dramatize. SHOW us your character talking with others, doing things with others, treating others well or badly or indifferently or exploitatively or tenderly. We want to be a fly on the wall observing your story, as if it were a play or movie. Least useful strategy: Nothing but dialogue. You actually aren’t a playwright or screenwriter,you have the added advantages of (1) being able to show us your character’s thoughts and (2) of using exposition to provide background. Use all the narrative tools available to you.

Common misconceptions aspiring writers have about character development?

The most common: “My readers understand what my character’s feelings are because they’re the same ones anybody would have in those circumstances.” No. People are amazingly varied. If you don’t provide enough dramatization of your character’s motives and emotions, we may misconstrue them entirely. Or,worse,assume the character is a big bore. Another common misconception is that saying “John was sad” amounts to showing emotion. You must make us feel his sadness.

Common mistakes writers make in developing characters?

Writing villains with no motivation other than pure evil.
Giving us too few details to grasp a character’s personality.
Having characters change without enough foreshadowing to show that they are capable of change.
Not taking us deep enough into a character’s POV.
Having all your characters sound exactly alike in dialogue.
Making heroes all-good and all-powerful.

Where can writers get book length advice from you?

I’ve written three books on writing: BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES, AND ENDS; DYNAMIC CHARACTERS; and CHARACTERS, EMOTION, AND VIEWPOINT. All are available from Writers Digest Books and on such book-selling sites as Amazon.com.

Where can writers workshop length advice from you?

I teach at various venues, depending on the year, but the two most consistent are at Hugo House in Seattle and at Taos Toolbox in Taos, New Mexico. The latter is a two-week intensive seminar in writing fantasy and science fiction.

Where can writers get article length advice from you?

I no longer write my column for WRITERS DIGEST MAGAZINE, but much of the same information is collected in my books on writing.

Podcast Spotlight: Extruding America

written by David Steffen

“Searching for the heart of a nation… in the throat of its people.” Thus is the mission of Extruding America, the brainchild of podcaster Gerard Armbruster. His mission: to deliver a nice slice of Americana straight to your ears with a generous dollop of profundity on top. Such as Stetson Tudd who lives in the state of Washington and has delivered periodic Postcards from Battersea, and… Well, admittedly, Gerard has only one correspondent. But don’t tell Stetson that.

Extruding America is a little tricky to classify. It’s certainly not the short story fare that I usually spend my listening time on. I listened to it on a recommendation, and didn’t really expect to like it since it wasn’t in my preferred format. Since it’s not in short story format I am doing this spotlight in place of the usual Best Of list I do for story podcasts.

But I really liked it. It had me laughing from the beginning with its tag line. And in the end I really felt like I knew the bumbling, well-meaning, lonely Gerard who puts everything into making this podcast and his rambling, philosophical, moody friend Stetson. Gerard’s not great at conducting interviews, but then again Stetson’s not great at being interviewed. Gerard begins most episodes with a target theme, like “Isolation” and a core question in support of that topic that he wants Stetson to answer. But Stetson usually just ends up talking about whatever’s on his mind at the time, which is rarely the chosen topic of the day.

The best way that I could describe the show is heartfelt parody of a show like Prairie Home Companion (or a parody of my mental image of that show since I’ve never listened). It’s heartfelt, but also silly. I especially liked some of the later episodes, after Gerard purchases a recording device which is so sensitive it can even record thoughts and dreams–and it works as advertises, as evidenced by some very hallucinatory recordings. My special favorite of these is Extruding America 36: Ghosts.

Sadly, the episodes of Extruding America started petering out in 2010, and the most recent episode was posted on September 2, 2011. I don’t believe there was ever an official announcement that the podcast was cancelled. Maybe there’s still hope that Gerard and Stetson’s voices will grace our ears once again! Gerard is voiced by Eric Luke, who I have been happy to hear as a voice actor on other podcasts.

Mike Resnick on “No Heavy-Lifting Sales”

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

Gordy Dickson told me close to half a century ago that if you were good, and prolific, and an aggressive marketer, there would come a point 25 years into your career where you received a pleasant surprise (which is to say, a reprint or foreign sale) in your mail box every week, all for writing just those two words, Ã¢â‚¬ËœMike’ and Ã¢â‚¬ËœResnick’ on a contract.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT IS “NO HEAVY LIFTING” SALES?

MIKE RESNICK: It’s my term for sales that require no writing, which is to say: reprint sales, foreign sales, audio sales, movie options, graphic novel sales, etc.

HOW MANY NO HEAVY LIFTING CHECKS ARRIVE IN YOUR MAILBOX PER YEAR?

Better than 100 a year, if you include royalty checks on self-published reprints (which is to say, once a book is out of print and reverts to me, if I can’t sell it for what I think is a good price, I’ll convert it into an e-book and sell it on my web page, and through Amazon, Barnes, Kobo, and the like.) Otherwise, probably 50 to 75.

HOW PROLIFIC DO YOU HAVE T BE TO REAP THIS KIND OF HARVEST?

Over the past 30 years I’ve probably sold 3 books a year (excluding anthologies I’ve edited), and anywhere from 8 to 10 stories a year on average.

HOW MUCH ADDITIONAL INCOME ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? POCKET CHANGE? CONVENTION EXPENSES? MORTGAGE PAYMENTS? COLLEGE FUND? RETIREMENT ACCOUNT?

Depends on your expenses. In 2008, my no-heavy-listing income came to $33K; in 2009, $50K; in 2010, $43K; in 2011, $51K; in 2012, $73K; in 2013, $31K; and for the first 6 months of 2014, $18K. This, I should add, is the gross amount, before paying fees to my domestic agent (where due) and various foreign agents (where due).

WILL THIS STRATEGY WORK FOR EVERY WRITER OR ONLY THE BIG NAMES?

It’ll work for most writers, and of course it’ll vary wildly, not only with the writer’s name and prestige, but also with the writer’s themes and styles, with how easy he is to translate, with whether his themes appeal to other nationalities. But in general, if he’s good enough to sell here, he’s good enough to sell in most places.

HOW CAN A WRITER APPLY THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY TO NOVELS?

Novels require agents, so the writer will want an agent who is known to have a top-notch foreign desk. (I should add that “foreign desk” is an industry term which translates as “working relationships with top-notch foreign agents”.) You learn about this by asking, not the agents, but the writers.

HOW CAN A WRITER APPLY THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY TO SHORT STORIES?

There you don’t need an agent, any more than you need one to sell to the top domestic magazines. You start studying the market, you find which countries have viable magazines with viable rates, you check to see which of them buy from American writers (and, like novels, these are invariably reprints). Most of the foreign editors are on Facebook or Google+ and most of the writers are happy to share information with you: “This one wants names”; “That one won’t take novelettes or novellas”; “This one looks like it may be folding soon”; etc. In other words, you network and exchange information, preferably with those writers who know what they’re talking about, just the way you do for domestic markets.

HOW CAN A WRITER APPLY THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY TO FOREIGN MARKETS?

I think I just answered that. 98% of your foreign sales are novels and short stores. True, I’ve sold a movie option to France, and they’re actually turning one of my stories into a movie in China as I write these words, but it both cases the sales were precipitated because they came across my translated stories in France and China, stories I had sold as described above.

HOW CAN A WRITER APPLY THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY TO AUDIO?

There are a number of podcasts and podcastzines , Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, many others , that specialize in short stories. Some only want nominated stories or stories of a certain type, and they’ll contact you once they know you have one. With others, just listen to the shows, talk to people who have sold them, and find out what their submission guidelines are. The real money comes in audio sales of your books. The 800-pound gorilla in the room at the moment is Audible.com, but there’s also Blackstone Audio, Brilliance Audio, and a handful of others. Again, find out who does the buying, make contact, and offer to submit your work.

HOW CAN A WRITER APPLY THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY TO SCREEN?

Most of the time it’s entirely up to Hollywood. One of their execs sees something he likes (I almost said “reads”, but no one out there reads) and contacts you. You don’t need a Hollywood agent, but you must have a Hollywood attorney, and you get one by asking writers you trust who have dealt with Hollywood to recommend their own. Once you’ve made a sale , which is invariably an option and not an outright sale , you start befriending as many people as you can meet in the industry, because this industry exists via personal cachet more than any other. Every Hollywood sale I’ve made , and that includes 11 options and 3 screenplays over the years , stems from the very first contact I made (and, as the saying goes, his friends had friends who had friends, etc.)

HOW DO ELECTRONIC EDITIONS AND PAPERBACK EDITIONS FACTOR INTO THE NO HEAVY LIFTING STRATEGY?

As I said, I create electronic editions , it costs next to nothing , of any reverted novel that I can’t sell for the price I want, and put them up for sale. These days I also find ways to bundle them with books by other writers; usually it comes to a 30-day sale at a reduced price , and being in a bundle with, say, Kevin Anderson and Rob Sawyer and Misty Lackey and Nancy Kress and Robert A. Heinlein helps all of us. Paperback (or hardcover) implies an outlay of money, and I have believed from the start that money is supposed to flow to the writer, not from him, so I never print/publish hardcover or paperback copies of my books.

WHAT ABOUT GRAPHIC NOVELS?

I wrote a Conan comic for Marvel back in 1971, and that is the full extent of my knowledge about the industry. I never asked for another assignment, and was never offered one. But a fellow I’ve collaborated with has all kinds of connections, and asked if I’d be willing to collaborate on graphic novels of a novella and a four-book series of mine, I said yes, and we’re in business.

WHAT ABOUT NONFICTION? WHAT ABOUT ANTHOLOGIES? WHAT ABOUT OUT OF GENRE MATERIAL?

My non-fiction tends to be articles about science fiction. Whether I write them for pro markets or for fanzines, every couple of years I collect a bunch of them into a book , I’ve got ten such books so far , and once in a while I can sell one to one of my foreign markets, but in truth I make very little money off that, hardly enough to warrant more than a couple of e-mails per country. I’ve just recently started writing mystery novels , I only have three out , and it’s too early to tell how they’ll do overseas compared to the science fiction. Anthologies tend to be owned by the publisher, and are not mine to re-sell (with very few exceptions).

HOW MANY REPRINTS BEFORE THE REPRINT INCOME EXCEEDS THE ADVANCE FOR THE ORIGINAL?

That presupposes that all reprint sales are for the same amount, and of course they’re not. (My top for a foreign novel sale is $19K; my bottom is $500 from a country I probably couldn’t find on the map.) It also presupposes that all advances are identical, and ditto. I’d say in general I make more from the rest of the world (combined, of course) than from America five times out of six. I found out 30 years ago that, while no other country ever pays you as big an advance as you get in the States, 5 out of 6 books will earn more in the rest of the world than here.

EVERY GOT MORE FOR A SHORT STORY RESALE THAN FOR THE ORIGINAL SALE?

No, though Japan has come very close a few times. And we won’t count Hollywood, which plays with Monopoly money.

YOU’VE SOLD 27 STORIES 10 OR MORE TIMES, 4 STORIES 20 OR MORE TIMES. HOW DO YOU FIND SO MANY MARKETS FOR THE SAME STORY?

You just keep looking, and remembering that a story is never done selling, which means you’re never done finding new markets. You also try to sell them with a five-or-seven-year term of lease, so that if the book is still doing well they have to put it again from you when the time period is up. Anyone who’s interested can hunt up my bibliography on my web page. It changes every few days, but it’ll give you a pretty thorough idea of what I’ve been talking about. And, for the record:

Novels:

Santiago , 22

Ivory , 18

Stalking the Unicorn , 13

Soothsayer , 13

Kirinyaga , 12

The Widowmaker , 12

The Soul Eater , 11

Walpurgis III , 11

Eros Ascending , 11

The Dark Lady , 11

Oracle , 11

Prophet , 11

The Widowmaker Reborn , 11

The Widowmaker Unleashed , 10

Starship: Mutiny , 10

Short fiction:

Kirinyaga , 30

For I Have Touched the Sky , 28

Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge , 22

Travels With My Cats , 19

The Last Dog , 15

The 43 Antarean Dynasties , 15

Winter Solstice , 15

Hunting the Snark , 14

Beachcomber , 13

Stalking the Unicorn with Gun and Camera — 12

The Elephants on Neptune , 12

Old MacDonald Had a Farm , 12

Robots Don’t Cry , 12

Down Memory Lane , 12

Article of Faith , 12

Me and My Shadow , 11

The Manamouki , 11

Hothouse Flowers , 11

Distant Replay , 11

His Award-Winning Science Fiction Story , 10

Frankie the Spook , 10

Bully! , 10

Malish , 10

The Pale Thin God , 10

Mwalimu in the Squared Circle , 10

A Princess of Earth , 10

Soulmates (collaboration with Lezli Robyn) , 10

All the Things You Are , 10

Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders , 10

Now, some of those, like “The Last Dog”, have been around since 1977, and have been selling and re-selling for 39 yearsÃ¢â‚¬ �but some, like “Soulmates”, appeared first in 2009 and had its 10^th sale by 2011. It’s a crapshoot, but if you do your homework and stick with it, eventually you’ll decide that it was worth it (and on some days, like when you get a handsome offer for a twenty-year-old book, it actually feels like stealing).

DO YOU HAVE TO DO ANY CUSTOMIZING OR REVISING WHEN YOU SELL THE SAME STORY TO A DIFFERENT MARKET?

No. If it’s an English-language market, the story’s already copyrighted and can’t be changed; and if it’s a foreign-language market, they’ll hire a translator.

ANYTHING ELSE WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NO HEAVY LIFTING SALES?

Like anything else, it’s a business. You run it in an orderly, businesslike manner, you never hold a grudge if someone doesn’t like your submission or doesn’t offer what you think it’s worth, and you use your brain. Here’s an example of what I mean by using your brain.

Back at the 1991 and 1992 Worldcons (in Chicago and Orlando), the Iron Curtain had just turned to tissue paper, and a bunch of magazine editors from former Soviet countries came to the cons, looking for stories. So did the Germans, who were starting some new publications. None of them had any money to speak of, but I met with each of them, and sold them a bunch of stories, usually for about $25 apiece, even gave away a pair of Hugo winners to destitute magazinesÃ¢â‚¬ �.and late one night, toward the end of the con, two of my friends took me aside and read me the riot act. You’re a pro, they insisted; and pros don’t sell quality reprints to anyone for under $100. That’s usually true, I replied; but these guys have no money, their countries just became free, and they have no book publishing industryÃ¢â‚¬ �but they will have book publishers before too long, and I think those publishers are going to look with favor upon writers who have already established an audience through their local magazines.

OK, move the clock ahead almost a quarter of a century. I’ve sold 41 books to Poland since that day, plus 29 to Germany, 24 to Russia, 10 to the CzechRepublic, and 8 to Bulgaria. And my friends who were too proud to do business with the cash-strapped magazine editors? I believe they’re all still waiting for their first book sale from any of those countries. Like I say, you gotta use your brain.

And there are games you can play if you know what you’re doing. One I mentioned in one of my dialogs with Barry Malzberg is playing the exchange rate. The example was “Ivory”. I sold British rights in about 1989 or 1990, I’d have to check which year, for 10,000 pounds. On the day payment was received, in England, the pound was $1.53. The Wall Street Journal was convinced that the pound was undervalued on the world marker, so I had my British agent deposit my check at Barclays, where I had an account…and when I sent the money to my US account 12 weeks later, the pound was $1.92…so that $15,300 became $19,200 (minus agents’ fees) just by sitting in a British bank for 3 months, a tidy profit of $3,900, which is more than I sold the damned thing for in Hungary, Romania, or Spain.