Tag Archives: Books

Patton Oswalt, I hate your tiny little guts.

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Okay, that was mean. I’m sure his guts are normal-sized. Sorry.

But goddamn it! He’s just too fucking funny. It ain’t right. I’ve got angst.

Oswalt’s been all over the interwebs lately. First with this piece he wrote about the Boston bombings, and then with this little nugget of awesome. Yeah, that’s right. It is a nine-minute improv performance about combining the Star Wars and Marvel universes into one uber-movie. (Since they’re both owned by Disney now, it would be totally possible. And amazing. Let us all hope that J.J. Abrams takes note.) Oswalt’s done a ton of weird little parts. You may not know you’ve seen his stuff, but you probably have. I recently saw him in Young Adult and I think he was the heart and soul of that movie, even if he wasn’t in it that much. I think I first heard of him when I watched The Comedians of Comedy. Bunch of brilliant, crazy weirdos, those people. Love it.

Anyway, I just read Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Oswalt’s book. Mind. Blown. I knew he was funny on stage and great on screen. This book, though, is a whole different kind of funny. I really like the way he uses a bunch of different formats: essays, poetry, scripty bits, comics, greeting cards, and (probably my favorite) a wine list. Even the list of “other books by this author” at the beginning is a joke, and a good one. He doesn’t just play around with format or genre, he plays to them, uses their tropes and conventions, which makes everything even funnier.

One thing Oswalt talks about in great detail is the intricacy of surviving nerdism in the 1980s. He’s about the same age as my sister, who is *mumblemumble* years older than me, and through whom I lived an early, vicarious teenagerhood. Bitch made me watch all the Freddy/Jason slasher-type movies and listen to Metallica when I was six, is what I’m trying to say here. It’s probably why I’m so twitchy. And so delightful. Anyway, point is, I get a lot of the references in Oswalt’s book, but there’s definitely a little bit of a generation gap as far as group enjoyment or cultural appreciation of those things goes. My generation didn’t get that stuff when it was new and being hyped in the media, so we had to discover it later on our own. Much like we did with Star Wars or Led Zeppelin or chat rooms. His R.E.M. experience was my Nine Inch Nails experience. Either way, there are so many references to books and music and movies here that I’m going to be busy for quite a while looking them all up. Good times.

The book is simultaneously memoir and pop culture commentary. It’s interesting, and very well done. He talks a lot about being a nerd and nerdy stuff, but all that stuff? That’s life stuff. Those books and movies and games and people made him what he is. It’s all inseparable, it’s all one thing. Seamless. And where he could have gotten angsty or whiny about it, instead he seems to really value all that stuff, all those experiences, and it comes across as pure enthusiasm. It’s pretty touching. His putting a positive spin on these potentially bottom-of-the-barrel moments is fucking impressive. “At least I learned something” or “It made me want something better” or “It could’ve been worse, so I wrote a script about the worst possible scenario and made a ton of money.” Dude’s an inspiration, whether that was his intention or not.

And it makes me raging jealous.

I was talking to a friend the other night and she said something about how what I write on my blog makes me seem like I’m just this one thing. Like it’s a character I’m doing or that I’m cherry-picking aspects of my personality to show here. And to a point, that’s true. Mostly for the sake of the writing. Picking a nerdy pop culture thing to talk about and then expanding that conversation into a bigger idea gives me something to nail the bigger idea to. It gives me an in, a reason. Maybe that makes me a hack or whatever, but it also keeps me reined in so I don’t go off all half-cocked about every little thing. Could I talk about non-geek stuff here? Well yeah, it’s my space. But I think putting bigger issues into the context of these small cultural things makes both more interesting, doesn’t it? All art is just a reflection of the culture that created the people who made the art, and then that art becomes a part of the culture, so the people change and grow, and then we get new and exciting art. It’s a vicious, beautiful cycle.

Sure, I could wax philosophical about something else. I find a lot of things interesting. Politics, religion, gender issues, economics, abandoned mental hospitals, etc, etc. Could I talk about, say, the war or socialized health care or right-wing theocracy on the blog? I could. It would probably be boring. Whereas if I put it sideways, tell it slant, maybe slip it into an analysis of dystopianism via scifi or horror, you’ll already be paying attention and when I get boring and ranty, perhaps you won’t notice quite so quickly. But I guess assuming that I have to have some nerd bait to lure you in to my discussion trap is pretty shitty of me. It underestimates you as an audience, so I’m sorry if it seems like I do that. I should be able to just go off about whatever for no reason, even if it is boring. And if you don’t like it, it’s only a thousand words. You can click away and come back next week. It’ll be ok. No hard feelings.

Meanwhile, if you have a single comedy-loving bone in your body, check out Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. It’s incredible. And if you don’t know Patton Oswalt’s standup stuff, you should watch My Weakness is Strong! or No Reason to Complain. He’s a genius. An itty bitty genius. Damn it.

“Didactic little parable-ish stories…”

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What’s the most difficult book you’ve ever read? I asked this on Facebook and Twitter the other day, just out of curiosity, and got a surprising range of answers. Everything from The God Delusion to A New Earth, from All the King’s Men to The Apocalypse Ocean. The strange thing is that none of the answers were the ones I was expecting. No one said Finnegan’s Wake, for example. Probably because no sane person has ever finished Finnegan’s Wake.

My personal answer is Gravity’s Rainbow by Pynchon, which I say out loud in front of people only with the caveat that I didn’t finish it. I came so close, got about three quarters of the way through, but still that unfinished motherfucker sits on my shelf, bookmark mocking me. Qualifying the question, instead, with “what’s the most difficult book you’ve ever finished?” my answer would then be Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s one of those books that most non-literature-obsessed humans haven’t read, and when you come across one of these fellow freaks in conversation you eye each other up with an odd mix of trepidation and mutual respect. “Well done,” we say. “Impressive,” we say. “What did you think of Wallace’s use of postmodern blah blah blah bullshit lit-major big-dick-contest nonsense?” we say, if we’re feeling particularly snooty that day.

I kid, I kid. Sort of. Not really.

It’s a fucking fantastic book, though, in all honesty. If you’re in the mood for a weird, funny read crafted by a ninja wordsmith, that may make you want to drink heavily and chain smoke, definitely give it a shot. It has page-long sentences which are, despite their unwieldy appearance, grammatically perfect. And two hundred pages of endnotes. I will say this: it’s the only book that I’ve ever read that took me a month to get through. And I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in two days. It’s a great book, and I love Wallace’s work (The Broom of the System and Oblivion are my other favorites, and his nonfiction stuff is mind-blowing), but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here for this.

Yes, it’s twenty minutes long and has no video, but just listen to it. Seriously. Point and click. It’s for your own good. For your enrichment. Because I love you. And because everything I’m about to say makes no fucking sense if you don’t just click on the link! Click it!

Ahem. Thanks.

Wasn’t that great?

I don’t remember why I first watched this thing. I know it was sometime in February, so maybe someone posted the link for his birthday or something. But I’ve listened to it every day since. I can’t put my finger on exactly why it speaks to me. Just one of those things, I guess. Perhaps it’s the speech I should have heard at eighteen or twenty-one, and am just now identifying with. (Thanks, Generation Y, for the extended adolescence. Grr.) As a point of interest, I actually had two separate professors tell me things from this speech in college. Things that I could’ve used to my advantage if I’d known what they were or what they were for. Sam Scoville, who is a badass (seriously, the man can tell you why everything you just said was etymologically wrong before you even make it to the next sentence – amazing), told me that story about the fish, in his own very weird way, trying to make a point about perspective and word choice and intention. And Ann Turkle, a wonderful grandmotherly crazy poet, would red ink my stories with “Pay attention!” and “This person isn’t paying attention either!” which, eventually, taught me how to focus, and how to make characters focus so none of us have to suffer through my saying things twice.

I went to my own college commencement. There was, in fact, a speech. But I don’t remember who gave it or what it was about. I’m sure it was lovely. I went to a small, private liberal arts school in North Carolina. I paid too much, sure, but I earned those pieces of paper, by god. They should give you vellum instead of paper if you pay more than a certain amount per semester, shouldn’t they? Seems appropriate. And a fat lot of good those sheets of should-be-vellum are doing me now, out here, in the wilderness. That’s bloody frustrating. But I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. And if I ever get to own a bookstore I’ll have some little bit of literary credibility. And a wall to hang those things up on, finally. Having a degree is pretty much just paying a lot of money to have the right to say you know your shit. It’s a license to use the shorthand. I point to the piece of paper, you know I know my shit. And you say, “Gee, that’s an expensive school. They should have printed that on vellum. Tell me about Shakespeare.” And then my head explodes.

Anyway. Wallace says that it’s a tired cliché, that thing about one’s liberal arts education being just “teaching one how to think.” I’ve said that thing a thousand times. Not just about a liberal arts degree, but about college in general. Mostly because the state of our public school system is an abomination and we should all either be ashamed or be trying to fix it. And I guess I never really thought about why that cliché was wrong, even though the evidence is all around me. Everywhere there are people with college degrees who don’t know how to think for themselves but are experts at regurgitation. Who are still complete morons, who just go through the motions of living, who will die happy never knowing that they’ve missed out on anything. And I don’t mean that in a Zen, “be here now” kind of way (but that stuff is true, too – life is fucking short, guys). What I mean to say is that so many people go to college because that’s just the next thing you’re supposed to do. Finish high school, finish college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have some larvae, retire, die. That’s the list, right? There might be some smaller sub-goals in there. Buy a car or three. Raise some grandbabies. Whatever. But there are cultural expectations, and if you don’t do one, or you do them out of order, maybe, it somehow gives people grounds to think that they can say you’ve failed in some way.

Which I suppose goes to what he says about having the freedom and wherewithal to choose what to worship. Those cultural expectations are the mass-delusion distillation of that idea, in a way. This is the list of things you’re supposed to do, so that you can have this group of specific things or accomplishments, so that we can measure you against other people, rank you, size you up. On a purely material level, it kind of reminds me of what Palahniuk said in Fight Club, that bit about “You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis.” Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my stuff. But I don’t have a lot of it. And I don’t need more more more. I own exactly one pair of jeans and I saved up to buy good ones so they’ll last me for a really long time. My own monetary frivolity tends more toward the irresistible “feed my brain” impulse. I love books. I love everything about them. That’s what I blow my money on. Having them around makes me feel physically more comfortable and talking about them is when I am my most confident. I’m passionate about literature and that’s got to count for something. But I do come out feeling somewhat one-dimensional. I should probably go ahead and start that therapy sometime soon, hmm? But how is that passion for intellectual engagement different from worshipping my own intellect? Or the intellect of others? What’s the difference between passion and worship? Or obsession? Intention, I think, is the key. Being deliberate. Paying attention.

I also think that what Wallace says about arrogance versus a healthy self-centeredness is really important. You are, in fact, the center of your universe. There’s no other way to be. It’s “Joe Fish doesn’t know he’s wet” all over again. The point being not to revel in the fact that you’re the center of everything but, instead, to be aware that your perspective is singular and make room for others’ perspectives and ideas in your worldview. This is an interesting point, coming from an artist. Because a writer’s perspective is only one way to look at their work, one that no reader can truly ever understand completely. It can make the writer self-obsessed or ignorant (or, worse, blasé) about where the audience is coming from. Another facet to this idea of self-centeredness, one that doesn’t actually come from this speech, is the generation gap problem. Infinite Jest was published in 1996, at the heart of the indie arts boom, before everything got so watered down and variegated by the internet. After the big system lost its grip, but before the niche arts culture we have now. Think Ani DiFranco or Kevin Smith. Back then, indie was a very punk thing to be and the term lent a sort of artistic credence. Anything corporate was automatically deemed soulless and fake, and that starving artist pain was a mark of truth, of reality, of approachability. Fast forward a bit, and look at what we’re dealing with now, at the product of this cultural schema: cynicism seems more “real” than genuine enthusiasm. We enjoy things “ironically,” a term which gives me the creeping horrors because of its widespread misuse. You don’t mean “irony,” guys, you mean “sarcasm.” Buy a fucking dictionary. (And while you’re at it, look up “literally,” and for the love of all things holy start using it correctly.) How did we get here? To this point where honest appreciation or enjoyment, or even simple optimism, is so often seen as a kind of doe-eyed stupidity? What’s with all the agro? When did we get so hard? So cold? And why does everything have to have a label? Can’t you just like a thing without knowing ahead of time if it fits into your pre-programmed list of acceptable interests?

One last thing (damn, this post got really long and ranty, didn’t it?). Wallace makes an excellent point about suicide. I have mixed feelings about suicide. It’s tremendously selfish, true, but I think it’s sometimes warranted, and should be seen as a right we all have. A legitimate option, rather than unmitigated cowardice. That self-centered thing again. What’s really poignant, though, about his discussion of it, is that he killed himself in 2008. Oddly, he talks about the instance of suicide by firearm in America, and he chose to take his own life by hanging himself. Not many people hang themselves. It makes a very particular statement, I think. But that might just be my lit-major reflex twitching, looking for cultural meaning where there is none. I could make some broad, sweeping statements about the mental health care system, but it’s probably better to look at each suicide on a case-by-case basis. Wallace was medicated for years, went off his meds for health reasons, and when he tried to go back on them they had stopped working. Happens all the time. Because as much as we try to help people, the brain is still largely a mystery. We’re shooting in the dark with a lot of these medications. Sad but true. But you’ve got to ask yourself, is it better to be dead? Or to be the walking dead? If something is pointless, you should stop doing it, right? Why should living be any different? Oh, that sounds so morose. So maudlin. Knowing that he killed himself does put a particular spin on this speech, though, doesn’t it? Odd, that. Teach me how to live, dead man. But I try not to judge writers by their deaths because, weirdly, that can so quickly become a slippery slope. (How often did Virginia Woolf write about water? Just for example.) His work is rich and dense and hilarious and visceral. That’s more important than how he died.

What’s the takeaway here? I don’t know. I’ve made this speech into a sort of mantra lately. Be aware. Be deliberate. Be precise. And if you’re going to give life advice, be real. Be blunt. Cut out all the “banal platitudes,” and tell people what they really need to hear. “Everything’s going to be ok” could very well end up being bullshit. I get so tired of all this new age-y, crystal-munching, “if you just put your energy out into the universe you’ll manifest your intentions” crap. I’m all about a good pep talk, and about keeping yourself on an even keel through positivity and trying not to dwell on the negative. But you’ve got to put in the work, too. You can’t just think about good stuff and expect good stuff to happen to you. Your results are only as good as your efforts, always. That’s the entire length and breadth of my inspirational commencement speech, should I ever be asked to give one: Find something you love and strive to be really good at it. Never do a half-assed job. Be kind. Be open to new ideas. Pay attention.

Where is that damn rainbow?

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One of the things that I can’t stand about all this clean country living is how far away I am from everything that resembles human civilization. When I say “I have to run to town,” I’m talking about a two and a half hour drive, one-way. It’s an all-day undertaking just to get some errands done. Pain in my homesteading ass, let me tell you. So when we were down there the other day I really wanted to go to the movies, but was thwarted yet again by travel-related time constraints. Grr. Argh.

Because I want to see the new Oz movie, damn it! The trailer is awesome. I like most of James Franco’s work, and I adore Sam Raimi. More than that, though, I really love the Oz mythology. Did you know that there are sixteen books in Baum’s series? A lot of people don’t. I think the Judy Garland movie is what’s at the forefront of the cultural saturation of this particular pop culture iconography. And for good reason. I hate a musical, but I do enjoy that film quite a bit, between the sing-songy bits. Also, I just finished reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire so Oz has been on my mind lately. I really wanted to compare the four different approaches to the story (because the new Raimi movie is a prequel, you see). Another time, perhaps.

There’s a particular paperback edition of the Baum books that I’ve been trying to collect for years. They’re not special, really, but it’s a fun hobby, looking for them in used bookstores and running across a couple at library and garage sales. I’ve got the first eleven so far, but I’ve only read the first four. Quick reads, and super fun, so I’m waiting until I have them all to read the rest of the series. Remember back in October when I did the lists of my all-time most important scifi and fantasy books? The Oz books really should have been on there somewhere. But here’s the thing: which list? Because basically, those books are a science fiction story set in a fantasy world. They defy categorization. Which is impressive, considering that they were written (well, published) between 1900 and 1920. There’s nothing else like them from that period. Especially not for children.

Baum was the son of a rich oil baron from New York. He had a bad heart and wanted to be an actor. How much farther from Dorothy’s dustbowl Kansas can you get? It’s really amazing worldbuilding, and while I’m tempted to say that tired Lit Crit thing about “the only real American fairy tale,” I don’t think it’s accurate. These stories are bigger than that, more than just cautionary tales and thinly veiled moralizing. I’m not going to put words in Baum’s mouth and tell you what he was trying to do, but I can tell you what I get from the series. There’s the social commentary about Kansas being poverty-stricken and bleak for farmers, versus the wealth and plenty of Oz. No one’s starving in Oz. There’s the fact that Dorothy is an orphan and even though Auntie Em and Uncle Henry seem like a good family, there’s no replacing dead parents. Dorothy has a deep emotional hole to fill and does so, in Oz, by surrounding herself with similarly broken or incomplete people. Codependent, perhaps, but effective. There’s the juxtaposition of science and religion (magic is always a stand-in for religion – we’re hardwired for that metaphor), frequently directly at odds with each other. The Wizard’s balloon versus the Wicked Witch’s broom, for example. Also man versus nature. Our technology is weak. The Tin Man rusts. The house gets shredded by a tornado. Tiktok always needs winding.

The 1939 movie is based on the first two books in the series, and is definitely more well-known than the books. And I’m fine with that. But there are some things that have made it into our common cultural knowledge that are different (read: wrong). Like the ruby slippers. In the book they were silver, but they were made red for the movie because the filmmakers were in a race against Gone With the Wind to be the first Technicolor sensation. That’s fair. It doesn’t change the story. But when I say “Dorothy’s silver slippers” no one knows what I’m talking about. The book is episodic and reads like several short stories stitched together, which is covered pretty well in the movie by all that pesky singing and dancing breaking up the action. But there are some pieces left out. Again, I’m fine with that. If they did everything in the book the movie would be six hours long. However, it requires some rearranging and finagling. For example, Glinda the Good Witch is really an amalgamation of three or four characters from the book. It’s done well, very neat and tidy, but when you read the book it’s a glaring difference. Probably most importantly, though, in the books it’s not a dream. Everything is real. I hate that the movie took that away from Dorothy. She retains what she learned, maybe, but she still has to go back to her everyday, horrible life, with no hope of escape. In the books she can go back and forth, like Narnia, sort of, without the time distortions. Making it all a dream works for the movie because it makes for an easy ending. There’s no reason to continue the movie on into the next story from the series, true, but what lazy writing. And I think that the success of that particular film with that particular trope has made it easier and more acceptable for subsequent writers and screenwriters to get away with using it. Bleh. Boring. I’m looking at you, J.J. Abrams. I’m looking at you.

I borrowed Gregory Maguire’s Wicked from a friend. I didn’t expect to like it. Maybe because it was such a popular book when I worked at the Giant Evil Bookstore and I tend to not read the things that are extra hyped up (does that make me a book hipster? I don’t know). I think a lot of people wanted to read it because of the success of the Broadway show, which goes back to that whole “I’m only reading a book because I liked the movie” thing that bugs me so much. But with the extra added bonus of my hating musical theater. Although I must say that Idina Menzel, the woman who plays the Witch on Broadway, also played Maureen in Rent and she has got some impressive rock and roll pipes. She can wail. I still hate musicals, though. Anyway, I really liked Maguire’s take on Oz. He makes a lot of concessions to the movie, probably because that’s what more people know. But he also sticks in a bunch of stuff from the books. It’s very clever. Like inside jokes, really, for readers in the know. Nothing that would derail the story he’s trying to tell, but little details here and there that I appreciated quite a bit. It shows that he knows his shit, that he’s not just using our easier, shallower cultural knowledge to his advantage (but I think he totally could have and no one would’ve noticed – this is ‘Mericuh).

Maguire has done some interesting things in this book. It’s the life story of the Wicked Witch, and we don’t get to connect the dots to the story we already know until the very end. Well played. He gives her such great depth, as well as Oz iself, really turning the country into a character all its own. Expanding even more on the themes that Baum put in place, he makes the Witch a social outcast in her youth and a political activist during her college years. She’s isolated as a kid because her father is a radical preacher and she’s the only green person anyone has ever seen. Religion and racism, basically, play a big part in her becoming a frustrated and volatile young woman. Then, when she’s a bit older, we get to see some of the inner workings of Oz. It’s a little darker than Baum’s Oz. The Wizard is not a benevolent father figure, but a crazed tyrant who swooped in from the “Other Land” (our world) and took over. Which is a good use of the psychology of religion, the “Other Land” being a place that was established in the mythology of Oz, much like Christianity’s Heaven or the Norse Valhalla. It’s the best way to take over a country, to hijack its myths and gods. Also, a great way to set up the later arrival of Dorothy. The portrayal of technology plays a part here, too, because science and magic are at each other’s throats in Maguire’s Oz. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” as we know from Arthur C. Clarke, but Maguire turns that on its head, making them both the objects of accepted religions, and they are at war. Brilliant. There’s an interesting bit of social commentary throughout, as well, which could be read as either racism or classism. Remember the Cowardly Lion? In Maguire’s Oz there are animals and there are Animals, sentient beings who are a part of human society. During the Wizard’s dictatorship, he’s gone all Hitler on the Animals, putting them in camps and using them as slave labor, as we use animals. This is the civil rights issue that the Witch takes up as her personal cause in college, becoming a radical and destroying her life and relationships over it. It’s really very well done. The whole point was to make her a real person and not just a caricature of mindless evil. And Maguire pulls it off. By the time the Witch and Dorothy finally meet, I was totally on the Witch’s side. Didn’t expect that.

So, yeah. You know you already know the story because we’ve all seen the movie. But you should definitely read the original books by Baum. They’re awesome. And maybe check out Wicked, as well. If you’re going to do both, though, I would tell you to read the Maguire first. I think the writing is more approachable and modern, and the story is only a slight sidestep from the one we already know. Whereas the Baum books, while amazing, are very much early twentieth century children’s fantasy literature. A bit of an acquired taste, maybe, is the easiest way to describe them. And if anyone sees the new Oz movie, let me know how it is. Where does it fit in all this? What an interestingly layered American cultural phenomenon. A century of adaptations, allusions, bastardizations. How we do love our little stories.

Sometimes I can be a truly horrible person

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I did it again. I got into a stupid tiff on Facebook. Fucking Facebook. Sometimes I think they should really revoke my Facebook privileges.

No! Don’t do that. I take it back.

I live in complete isolation. I needs my Facebook.

Anyway. Here’s what happened: I posted a link to this article on my sister’s wall. (For the rest of this story to work, you should probably go ahead and read that. I know y’all don’t like to click on links. I have the numbers to prove it. But it’s the crux of the whole thing I’m trying to do here. Sorry.) Because she’s also a huge Harry Potter fan and was also a Literature (with a capital L) major in college, I thought she’d find it interesting. She didn’t. So then, our cousin commented “HA HA HA!!!!!!,” which ruffled my feathers a bit (I’m easily irked by extraneous exclamation points). The damn thing is about child abuse, and I could see no way in which that would be funny. And I said so. And I was probably snippier than I needed to be about it but, you know, ruffled feathers and whatnot. To which my cousin replied: “A conspiracy theory on a fictitious children’s book. FUNNY!”

What went through my mind was, Well, clearly, she just read the headline and didn’t read the article. No one could possibly find humor in this. It’s too awful. You see my logic, right? At this point, I’m not being an asshole. Yet. Just give it a second. My booknerd dander was up so I said: “The theory itself is really interesting, and totally plausible. Just because it’s a children’s book doesn’t mean it can’t be serious literature with heavy issues.” What a fucking Lit major thing to say. I could have said a lot more Lit major things, but I let it go. I had met my snippy bitch quota for the day, I guess. Achievement unlocked!

A day later I sent my cousin a message to apologize. She hadn’t given me any indication that her feelings had been hurt, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Family’s family and I know I can come off more harshly when I’m typing than I would in conversation. She wrote me back. And I cried. It was a play-by-play account of her own abuse as a kid, which of course I won’t put in print here. But trust me, you wouldn’t want to read it anyway. Here’s the part where I’m an asshole. Ready?

I had completely forgotten that all of that had happened to her.

I was there. I knew shit was bad. I should probably make it very clear at this point that this particular cousin was adopted into our family after escaping her own horrible one at age eleven. No one in my own family would treat a kid like that. We do the exact opposite, take them in with open arms and love them with everything we’ve got. It was rough, though. And I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway. Moving on. So then I have a conversation about child abuse in literature with her and it completely slips my mind that she knows what she’s talking about in way more important ways than I do? What a fucking jerk I am. Standing on my self-righteous little soapbox talking about books and their cultural impact and blah blah bullshit. Completely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, right? People (if you can call them people) hit little kids! In real life! That trumps anything I have to say.

Doesn’t mean I’m not going to say it. Maybe that makes me even more of an asshole. Might as well keep going. I’m on a fucking roll.

A small quote from my cousin’s message: “Harry Potter IS just a book. I know what the real thing felt like. To me that’s why taking the book somewhere it wasn’t meant to go is funny.” I get that. I really do. It’s all relative.

However.

I’m going to stand up for escapism. I have to. And if you don’t take that article seriously or see how one could read the whole HP series as an extended metaphor, fine, whatever. But we all agree that Potter’s family treated him like shit, right? I don’t see any way around that. If Hogwarts was all in Harry’s head, that’s tremendously unhealthy. And that would mean that his real life was a lot more awful than we could imagine, for a long time, and I don’t want to think about him that way. I would prefer to think that’s not what Rowling was trying to do or say. I like my fantasy worlds to be real, if that makes any sense. (It probably doesn’t.) He’s a great character, one of my favorites, if only because he overcomes so much to find happiness and purpose. Putting aside psychological hyperbole, he’s clearly a damaged boy. A broken boy with a bleak past, an uncertain future, and a lot of demons. The potentially beautiful thing is that real little kids with fucked up lives can read these books and relate to Harry. Maybe find some strength in his perseverance. Maybe not feel so alone. That’s got to be worth something, doesn’t it?

I saw this all the time when I worked in the children’s department at the Giant Evil Bookstore. There were a few regular customers who gravitated toward damaged characters or stories with underdog heroes. Often they were the kids with the sad eyes. I had one little guy who used to come in all the time. He was very tiny and always came in alone, usually paid for his books mostly with change. Smart as hell, reading way above his age level. Loved Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and The Graveyard Book and The Mysterious Benedict Society. One day I found him his book, told him to enjoy it, gave him a great big smile and patted him on the head. And he flinched. Almost broke my heart, you guys. Those are the kids who get something more than entertainment out of books.

Fuck, I can’t remember that kid’s name. That’s going to drive me crazy now.

I understand retreating into books. My family’s amazing. There wasn’t even a hint of anything coming anywhere close to abuse in my house. But I was socially awkward and extremely lonely at school. I read every book I could get my hands on. They were my friends. They were my adventures. I understand that I don’t have a leg to stand on to compare myself to kids with real issues. That’s not my point, nor is it my intention. I’m just saying that the right book could save a kid’s sanity, right? Help them see that they can get through whatever happens to them. Make them learn to stand up for themselves. Escapism is important. Fantasy is important. Reading about a kid with family problems, or a lonely kid, a kid like them, whatever their deal may be, can mean so much.

Anyway, I’d like to apologize to the world for being an insensitive jerk. And I apologize for being quick to jump on my soapbox. I’m not good with people. Clearly. That’s why I stick with books. They don’t get their feelings hurt when I act like an ass.

The Unreliable Narrator

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I was sitting in my chair, trying to figure out what to write for this week’s blog, staring blankly in the general direction of my stack of books (because my bookshelves are full – again), and my eyeballs focused on them without warning. I was somewhat surprised to notice that I’ve been reading a ton of biographies and memoirs lately. I’m not sure why that’s happening. Maybe it’s because I’ve been given a lot of books as gifts recently, or because I haven’t been around very many people, or just because my brain needed a break from fiction. That does happen from time to time, but usually I tend to swing toward weird history books or books about language or psychology, and I’ll read one or two and then dive straight back into the warm, comforting waters of scifi and fantasy. The nonfiction kick has happened before, but it always had some other accompanying obsession, you know? The books were a symptom of a bigger phase: the Beats, mental hospitals, heroin, punk rock, Buddhist monks, serial killers, teratology, 19th century circuses.

Hmm. There’s a weird pattern there. I don’t really want to examine that.

Moving on.

This biography thing is odd. And so sudden. Here’s my question: why are other people so interesting? I mean, I understand that people with interesting stories to tell should get book deals. That’s not what I’m saying. No, what I’m asking about is our fascination, as readers, with other people’s lives. Is it just voyeurism? Could it be that simple? Or, the more interesting possibility: do we turn real people into characters? Do we separate ourselves from them, through reading their stories, enough to convince ourselves that they’re not real, at least until the book is over? Do we make them seem like fiction, somehow, by tricking our brains with books?

It’s not just books, though. This is the same thing I wonder about reality television shows (which I firmly believe are the used band-aids of Satan and will destroy us as a culture). Obviously those shows are heavily edited and the people on them are poked and prodded by producers constantly. Which results in them becoming caricatures of themselves, right? The things that make them interesting aren’t the majority of the things that make them up as people, or even of the things that make up their day. No one’s going to read a biography about a normal guy doing normal stuff. But if you take out all the normal bits and stack all the weirdnesses on top of each other in a big 22-minute freakshow or 200-page pile, it becomes fascinating, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s just me. This kind of over-analytical thinking may not be a problem that other people have. Could be I’m just wired in a strange way. Often I’m blind to my own quirkiness and assume that the things I do all the time are standard operating procedure for other humans. Like eating my cereal with a fork or insisting that there will always be a right and left sock in every pair. I swear, there’s logic there, even if it’s hard to explain. So when I tell you this stuff what I don’t want you to hear is that I have a hard time separating fact from fiction, real folks from characters. And I certainly don’t want you to jump to some extreme conclusion like “she’s delusional.” I’m not. I’ve been through all the appropriate tests.

When I was a kid we traveled a lot. Like, a lot. And I was a little twitchy, being precocious and bored, so my dad used to calm me down by having me tell him stories. Eventually it turned into a game, one only I could win. In the airport or the train station: “What about that lady in the red coat?” In the bar or a restaurant: “What’s the deal with that couple over there?” Sometimes it was more specific: “That guy in the hat is a spy, right?” And sometimes it was nothing at all: “What do you think the wind does when it’s not here?” So, to me, everyone’s a character, every moment is story fodder, a scene waiting for someone to notice it. It’s just operant conditioning. Edward Hopper, the artist, once said that he only painted lonely people. But you can’t assume that they were all lonely all the time. It was just that moment. One he took advantage of.

As I grew up and decided I wanted to write, I became a compulsive people-watcher and eavesdropper. I’d hang out in coffee shops and go eat dinner by myself just to write stories about the conversations I’d hear and the people I saw. This has also given me a hypersensitivity to detail. I call it “the cop eye.” You can tell so much about a person without ever having to hear them speak. Left- or right-handedness, type of shoes, what they keep on the table versus what they keep in their pocket or bag, the book they’re reading, mannerisms, tattoos, tics – all of these tell you something about that person, something beyond the thing itself. All that stuff? That’s story stuff.

I sometimes think about what future archaeologists will make of our history, of our stories. Who will be our primitive gods? Oprah? Bill Gates? Hitler? Queen Elizabeth? But right now they’re just people. And so is the lady in the red coat. Maybe that’s why I’ve been reading so many biographies. To get at those odd pieces of seemingly normal people. To dig them out. To see what makes them interesting. I’m sure this phase will be over soon. It doesn’t make for good blog writing. Although a few of them might be up your nerd alley. Some recommendations:

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened – Jenny Lawson (she’s my blogging hero)
Nerd Do Well – Simon Pegg (because he’s a true fanboy, and freakin’ adorable)
Just a Geek – Wil Wheaton (actor-turned-writer-turned actor again)
Magical Thinking – Augusten Burroughs (also check out Running With Scissors for utter familial madness)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris (always hilarious)
The Age of Wonder – Richard Holmes (not really a biography, but has lengthy biographical bits about lots of amazing 17th century scientists who are way more interesting than you’d think they would be)

Check them out. Let me know what you think. And sorry this post is kind of rambly and crazypants and all over the place. I’m still not operating at 100%. But I’m not delusional! I swear. And I promise that none of you will end up in a story without your express permission. Probably. The odds are in your favor.

Yes, I am aware that “unfilmable” is not a word.

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I think I missed Cloud Atlas in the theaters. I looked up what’s playing today and it’s not there anymore. Which is a drag, because I really wanted to see it. But I’ve been super broke and the theater (or theatre, if you’d rather) is two hours away which, with a three-hour movie, means that I’d have to take a whole day off to go. And planting winter crops waits for no man. Or movie. Fucking winter crops. I don’t even like cauliflower. There, I said it. I feel so much better.

Urm, anyway. Cloud Atlas. I read the book. Maybe three years ago? Ish? It took a minute to really get into it, but once I got past the seventeenth century shipboard epistolary bits (because those are the most boring kinds of books on the planet, and I have read computer manuals cover to cover), it was awesome. All kinds of awesome, actually. And it doesn’t really sum up well, so I’ll spare you the torture of my trying. But now that it’s a big movie, you should be able to waltz into any bookstore and find a copy pretty easily.

Which always makes me have all kinds of annoying feely things, when that happens. That I-want-to-read-the-book-because-of-the-movie thing makes me cranky and I can’t really put my finger on why. On the one hand, I like it when people read books. We don’t do enough of that, frankly, and I’m kind of staking my life trajectory on the fact that people will continue to do it at least into the near future. But on the other hand, there’s something really icky about people flocking in droves to read a book just because they liked the movie and want more more more more of a franchise or a character. Little piglets, snarfling up every crumb of media exposure they can get to a thing that made them happy once for a little while, right? And that’s probably me selling people short. I do that a lot. (Not so much anymore, since I am, by necessity, around fewer people. It’s an impulse control thing I’m working on.) But you see my point? They wouldn’t have read the book at all if the movie hadn’t come out. I’d like to see the math on how many books would not get read in America if there weren’t movies made from them. I saw it happen a thousand times at the Giant Evil Bookstore. Harry Potter, Golden Compass, The Help, Hunger Games, Watchmen, any of those Jodi Picoult/Nicholas Sparks monstrosities, and godforsaken fucking Twilight. And tv shows, too: Dexter, True Blood, Game of Thrones (even though I think I left before that show actually started to air, the hype was already getting really big).

And I’m not making any sort of commentary on the quality of these shows or movies. Just because the book was good, doesn’t mean that the movie will necessarily fall short, but that’s usually the case. More often than the other way around, anyway. I think I’ve only seen a handful of movies that live up to the book. Depending on the style of writing, many books just don’t lend themselves to being turned into movies. And that’s the thing about Cloud Atlas. I wanted to see it, but I was kind of scared to because I so enjoyed the novel and didn’t want to see it get fucked up. But I will say that I really like the Wachowskis and they probably didn’t do as much damage as other directors could have, but if they did it’ll be the first time they’ve disappointed me.

Cloud Atlas is in a small group of books that I had previously considered unfilmable. And most of the books on that list are so fantastic precisely because they are unfilmable. Maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired, but there’s something precious about being forced to figure out how a thing would look or how a scene would work using just the tools available inside your head. You think on it for a while, manipulate it with your worldview, turn it over and over, and then move on. Part of it is yours after that, you know? Reading a great book is a collaborative effort between two brains, miles and years apart, and I think that’s an amazing kind of sorcery. A feat of the engineering of our little monkey minds, that we can do that to and with each other. And maybe that’s why we feel like so many movies are duds, because sometimes they don’t play out like we thought they would, or look the way we thought they should, or something we thought was important got left out (I’m looking at you, Peter Jackson). A brief and incomplete list of these unfilmables (in order of increasing impossibility, and not counting comics):

Most of the Dark Tower series – Stephen King
Geek Love – Katherine Dunn
Imajica (and to a lesser degree, Weaveworld) – Clive Barker
Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

I could be wrong. Maybe, since computer graphics are getting better every second, one day these will be within reach of being done correctly. But that’s the problem. There is no “correctly.” Literature is so subjective, you know? In a way that movies can never be. And while it’s admirable that a director might take on a passion project and try their best to make a great film out of a book they adored (like the Wachowskis did with Cloud Atlas – it’s a huge movie but it’s 100% indie), I just feel like there’s no substitute for the reader’s brain. What an incredible piece of machinery.

Writery thoughts

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The weirdest thing happened to me this week, you guys. I wrote a short story.

Ish. Kindasorta.

I wrote a first draft of a thing. It wants to be a short story.

What’s weird about it is that I haven’t written any new fiction in almost two years. It’s a little daunting. I fiddled about quite a bit with my novel until the whole Doctor Who thing happened and took the wind out of my sails. But new stuff? There’s been nothing for quite some time. And that’s terrifying.

Oddly, what’s even more terrifying is looking at this new thing and thinking that it might be awful. What a fun quirk of the writer’s brain that is. And I wasn’t weirded out by the story at all, at first. What hit the panic button was asking someone to read it. The second I did that, I lost all momentum. The observation of the thing changed the creation of the thing. Heisenberg’s uncertainty short story. Or something like that.

And that’s really why I’m bringing it up now. Every week I spout some verbose nonsense and put it up here in blogland, where it is habitually read by fives and tens of people. That doesn’t make me nervous at all. Because these things I say are opinions, things that I can defend, things that are (usually) based on some objectify-able outside influence which you can absorb into your own satellite system of nerdiness, or not, at your will. My opinion doesn’t change your experience of a thing.

But when it’s something that I’ve created? Out of thin air? Out of my own tortured little brain? The thought of someone telling me it’s horrible? That actually hurts. I suppose it’s that juxtaposition of feely things that bothers me. I want to write but I don’t want to be harshly judged. But I write every week and throw it out into the interwebs for summary judgment. What hypocritical bullshit is that?

“Well, suck it up, furball. Criticism is an intrinsic part of art.”

Yes, yes, I know. If I want to be a writer (a fiction writer, an author, not just a small-time blogger) I need a thicker skin. And the only way to get a thicker skin is with scar tissue, I guess. Take the hit. The hit is necessary.

But taking the hit fucking suuuucks, man.

Why are they so different? Writing fiction and blogging? I’d like to ask a professional brain-poker about that. Am I using some other part of me to write fiction? That moment when I get a little seed of an idea, an image or a line, and I feel like I’ve got to feed it so it will go the hell away, that’s an amazing moment. Those are the moments that artists live for. Inspiration. And then, after you feed the idea and it grows into a thing and you work on it and polish it and make it pretty and it’s done? That’s amazing, too. I feel like it’s worth the fear. Isn’t it? I just think it’s interesting how nonchalant I am about the blogging and then the fiction writing gives me the creeping horrors.

Here’s the bottom line: I don’t know what else to do. If I’m not a writer, I don’t know why I’m here. Maybe I’m doing the wrong kind of writing. I’ll grant you that. But I had kind of a weird childhood and was trained from a very young age to value the written word, to take shelter in escapism, and that storytelling is one of the most important things that people can ever do. Fuck thumbs, stories are what make us human. And this fear, when it pops up, makes me question that. Makes me question my purpose on this planet.

I had a conversation with a very dear friend the other night. She’s nervous about applying to grad school, questioning herself a little. And I told her that she’s not allowed to quit until she tries. Being a failure is more noble than being a quitter. Being a failure means that you have gained the knowledge that you can’t do something. Being a quitter means that you’re ok with never having learned whether you can do something or not. And that’s cowardly. So she and I had this chat (and she’s still applying, hooray!) and then two or four beers later I was telling her about the new short story and the reader fear I have about it. All this existential questioning. And I realized that we were having the same conversation again, only backwards. And more slurring was involved. So what’s the difference? There is no difference. I just have to suck it up and be a big girl and do the thing I’m scared of. And that’s that.

So what have we learned? Probably not much. But I’m going to go ahead and give you fair warning: once I’ve gone through another couple of drafts of this story I’m going to post it on the blog. This may not be the right forum for my goofy fiction, but I’m comfortable here and I trust you guys. (Thanks for that, by the way. I owe you all a big fat lot of hugs and high fives.) And if I say I’ll post it, I have to. Hopefully that will take the fear away and make it just a plain old blog deadline. We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and sorry for getting all deep and heady on you. Watch this and it’ll lighten your mood.

The Fantasy List, Part Two

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Seriously, if you don’t know what’s going on by now I can’t help you. Ok, fine, yes I can.

One note about this last part of the Listyness: I had a few runners-up that I couldn’t go without at least mentioning, so I tacked them on at the end. No big rambly paragraphs, just a little note about why I thought they should fall somewhere in your genre-reading schedule. Because lists are hard. Well, keeping lists short is hard. I have a list problem.

Here we go, the grand finale:

The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett (1983)

It’s all about the worldbuilding here. And monstrously huge series (this is the first of forty, but I haven’t read them all so I just put the first one on the list). Pratchett has masterfully created a fun, quirky universe with the Discworld books. And he’s funny as hell. Pratchett is to fantasy as Adams is to scifi, basically, and stands as the one overtly hilarious writer in this part of the list. Because variety is the spice of life? Or some other such boring cliché. But so much fantasy writing is gloom and doom and death and destruction and slaying with big shiny swords or spells and shit. It’s refreshing to get your otherworldly fix and your giggle fix simultaneously.

Others to try by Terry Pratchett:
Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
Nation
(both of these are non-Discworld books)

Imajica – Clive Barker (1991)

Epic epicness. And while I feel that word has been grossly overused of late, here I use it completely in earnest. Um, twice. Barker is another incredible worldbuilder, but he does it with such flair and finesse, without any pandering to the reader or unwieldy exposition. Plus, he’s a badass horror writer so his stuff always has a bit of a twist towards the dark. A little kink. And this book is so complex, I can’t even begin to summarize it here where I don’t have the room to ramble. Suffice to say it is a book that can change your whole idea of what books can be. Or, as my personal Tyler Durden said: “It was all other worlds and dimensions and creatures and shit.”

Others to try by Clive Barker:
Weaveworld
Coldheart Canyon

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (1865)

Yeah, yeah. I know I said no kids’ books, but I lied. I’m a writer. It’s what we do. And Alice in Wonderland is arguably inappropriate for modern children. Consider the fact that when it was published there really was little to no distinction between literature for young people and that for adults. And it could also be argued that this book has no place on a list of fantasy books and belongs more squarely in the absurdist literature category. Which is probably accurate, but I’m including it here more for its influence than for its content. It’s important to the genre because it ripples and echoes through the minds of fantasy writers probably more than any other group of people. Excepting perhaps those of us who have taken too much acid.

Others to try by Lewis Carroll:
Through the Looking Glass
A Tangled Tale

American Gods – Neil Gaiman (2001)

How many times do I have to tell you to go read some Neil Gaiman? Seriously. I honestly think that Neverwhere fits more cleanly into the fantasy category, but I chose American Gods for the list because A) it’s fucking awesome and B) it fills the religiosity gap. Gods and myths are a huge part of the fantasy genre and I feel as though I’ve failed to adequately represent them here. American Gods is also a really interesting look at Americanism on a religious/mythological level. We’re so vocal here about our beliefs, and yet so often we fail to think about what it is that we actually worship. Takes an Englishman to point it out. (On a related note, the dying-god theme is also really fabulously explored by Tom Robbins in Jitterbug Perfume. It’s not fantasy but I’m sneaking in an extra recommendation here. Don’t tell anyone.)

Others to try by Neil Gaiman:
Neverwhere
The Graveyard Book

Arthurian Legends – Various (1000 AD – present)

Ok, this might be a cop-out, but there’s really no way around it. There would be no fantasy genre without Arthurian legend. Yeah, there would still be kings and queens and knights and all that chivalric blah blah. But the key term here is “legend.” The man (if he actually existed) has been made into mythology and is the standard by which all heroic figures are judged. These stories are so embedded in our literary and cultural consciousness that we take them for granted and don’t even notice that they’re there. And while I may not have one particular source to point you to, I cannot stress enough how massively important these nine centuries’ worth of stories are. Look it up, I guess. And go watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail again.

Fiction recommendations for Arthurian-legend-based stuff (from my sister, because she’s obsessed and I asked for her input – thanks, Sister!)
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Pendragon Series – Stephen Lawhead

In-betweeny ones and runners-up (briefly, I promise):

World War Z – Max Brooks: Because…well, because zombies.
1984 – George Orwell: Terrifying political takey-overness.
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley: For the gross science bits. Super fun.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Because they’re cautionary/morality tales couched in escapism.
Abhorsen – Garth Nix: A fantastic look at death.
The Neverending Story – Michael Ende: A story about a story about a story.
Robin Hood – Howard Pyle: Best non-stinky medieval characters ever.
Beowulf: Because Grendel = Gollum and I just wanted to throw that theory out there.
The Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson: Using real scientists in their heyday as characters in a mysterious plot? Awesome.
The Windup Girl – Paolo Bacigalupi: Reverse steampunk.
The Unincorporated Man – the Kallin brothers: Because corporations are fucking scary.

Woohoo! The end of Listy Goodness. That was fun, right? I thought so. But I wasn’t really here. I was off being ungodly busy. Maybe next year we’ll do scifi/fantasy movies during October. Thoughts?

The Fantasy List, Part One

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Ok, a couple of things up top. If you’re feeling lost and confused about what’s going on here, fear not! You can catch up quickly and easily by reading this post. And maybe this one.

Good. Now that we’re all on the same page, there is one big, fat disclaimer thing I need to say about this part of the Great Listy Experiment of 2012: I do not read nearly as much fantasy as I do scifi. I never have. I am much more likely to fuck up here and miss something important (which is not to be confused with missing something you love). Let’s not all tell me how dumb I am all at once, ok? Maybe just be positive about telling me about a cool book I might like to read instead. And then maybe, just maybe, I’ll read it and we can talk about it and all will be right with the world.

Once more, into the breach:

The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss (2007)

This one’s awfully new for me to think that it’s important, but hear me out. Besides the fact that it’s tremendously well-written, I think what Rothfuss brings to the table here is a kind of fanboy synthesis. Not that his work is derivative, not at all, but in his worldbuilding one can see the glimmer of someone so steeped in fantasy, so dedicated to the conventions of the genre, that he can break those rules with confidence. And while you may not know where he’s going, you become willing to follow no matter what. That’s just damn fine writing and to hell with genre labels.

Others to try by Patrick Rothfuss:
The Wise Man’s Fear
The Princess and Mr. Whiffle

The Magicians – Lev Grossman (2009)

Magic is one of the key elements in a lot of fantasy writing, but it brings with it a sort of onus of meaning. You hear “magic” and you think robes and hats and wands and bippity boppity boo nonsense, right? The Magicians blows all that shit right up. Which is why it made the list. Defying stereotype and doing something truly new and exciting is difficult in any sort of genre fiction. I once described this book as: “If Harry Potter had been raised by Hunter S. Thompson and Sid Vicious and then set loose on the world.” Plus, there’s a really cool aspect of book/story obsession that I think drives the characters in a super-interesting way. And it’s got a gritty, modern feel that’s a refreshing change from all that high castle tower crap that gets so boring so fast.

Others to try by Lev Grossman:
The Magician King
Codex

The Dark Tower (series) – Stephen King (1982-2004)

Shall we use the term magnum opus? Oh, why not? Let’s. Stephen King is pretty badass at anything he sets his hand to, but this series of (seven) books is truly a masterpiece of fantasy. The thing about King is that you have to trust him. The first two books are terribly odd, but if you stick with it, the world he drags you into is so beautifully intricate, so mind-bending and horrifying, that by the end of the seventh book you’re pissed that it’s over. I threw my copy across the room (and then slapped myself for almost breaking the spine on a first edition, first printing). There’s a really interesting layering of realities, as well, that’s unlike any other kind of fantasy writing that I’ve come across (although Clive Barker does come pretty close). And it’s Stephen King so there’s plenty of fun blood and guts and gore.

Others to try by Stephen King:
Eyes of the Dragon
The Wind Through the Keyhole
(both related to the Dark Tower in some way)

Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin (1996)

Straight off the top: I have not read the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire series or seen the TV show. Do not give me any spoilers! I’ll be so mad. This book made the list alone, without its series mates, because it’s pretty much everything I think of when I think of fantasy. Politics, deceit, stupid names that are impossible to pronounce, maidens in distress, battles, fucking dragons. Come on. “Quintessential” is not a word that I use lightly, folks, but I’m going to pull it out here. I just have to. And Martin is a fantasy writer’s fantasy writer. He uses every clichéd trope you could possibly use but with such aplomb, and in such a gritty, dirty context, that I totally forgot that I don’t even really like castle intrigue-type novels. And it’s got a really cool changing-viewpoint structure that I enjoy quite a bit. I’m going to read the rest of the series as we get closer to the last book’s release date so I don’t have to be agonized by the wait. Seriously, don’t tell me what happens. For real.

Others to try by George R.R. Martin:
Fevre Dream
Dying of the Light

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-1955 – 1937, if you count The Hobbit)

This one’s the big daddy of epic fantasy and y’all would have my head if I didn’t put it on here. However, I must say that I’m really not a huge Tolkien fan. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the series, and they’re absolute must-reads, but I’ve read them twice and I think I’m probably done with them. But as far as fantasy goes, as a genre, everything that has come after has been affected by Tolkien’s work. It’s the nuclear fallout of the genre, basically, the one that all others are held up to for comparison. The touchstone. Doesn’t get more important than this. Also, I think I may have accidentally married Tom Bombadil. Score.

Others to try by Tolkien:
The Silmarillion
The Children of Hurin

To be concluded next week…

The Scifi List, Part Two

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Confused? Not sure what I mean by “Part Two”? Where’ve you been, man? Go read last week’s post first. We’ll all wait here for you.

Ready? Alright then.

The Scifi List, continued:

Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton (1969)

Crichton, much like Stephen King, gets a bad rep for being “too pop.” But I enjoy his stuff quite a bit. Andromeda Strain is science fiction in the truest sense of the term. And, more than most of his other work, draws heavily on his training as a physician. Accuracy is important when talking about crazy killer space germs, I think. And there’s something a little more scary about his tone of clinical detachment, as well. As opposed to, say, The Stand, which is a more aftermathy, post-apocalyptic kind of story. (Fun fact: did you know that Michael Crichton was 6’9″? You do now.)

Others to try by Michael Crichton:
Timeline
Sphere

I, Robot – Isaac Asimov (1950)

I couldn’t in good conscience let this list go without any Asimov. Wouldn’t be right. I, Robot is pretty important in that it set the parameters for a lot of subsequent techy, roboty scifi. His three Laws of Robotics have become the Magna Carta for both scifi and actual AI research. Because they’re good laws. They make sense. And I’m practically Vulcan in my dedication to logic. But the breaking of those laws is equally exciting, isn’t it (ie, The Matrix, Terminator, etc)? Plus, I, Robot is set in 2010 (in the original edition) and I love saying, “Isn’t it cool that we live in the age of science fiction?” Because that’s fun.

Others to try by Isaac Asimov:
Foundation
The Gods Themselves

Contact – Carl Sagan (1985)

Sagan is probably more important to real space exploration than to fiction about space exploration (because hard science will always be more important than art, try as we might to change that). But he was an inspiration to scientists and writers alike. For the record I think that both disciplines benefit from people who do both. Rare as they are. Contact is another one of those books that shows us the flawed beauty in our perception of what it means to be human. If we found life in space, what would we want from it? What would we want it to see in us? That’s kind of the point of the Sagan record on Voyager, I guess, but the politics and psychology of that process is really well-illustrated in Contact. (And when you’re done reading it you should listen to this episode of Radiolab about the making of the Sagan record. Or before. Hell, I don’t care.)

Others to try by Carl Sagan:
Cosmos
Broca’s Brain
(both nonfiction)

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (1895)

So, this one’s important not so much for its scifi cred, but because of the time period in which it was written. It’s an excellent historical look at extending existing social mores and customs and their accompanying metaphors and analogies into a new genre of fiction. Much like how a lot of newer scifi has become all guns and killing-the-bad-guy since we got all frothy over the war on terror. Plus, I needed at least one about time travel and this is an oldie but a goodie. Way before the hard science existed on the possibilities of time travel, Wells wrote a book about a scientist making a time machine. Which was nothing but a flight of fancy in his day. (Side note: how did that happen? That it became a part of human nature to consider being able to move through time?) And then when the character arrives in the distant future, we can see another example of xenophobia at work (much like in War of the Worlds). Fear is the best tool that any writer has at his disposal, honestly, and it can destroy you. Fear of the unknown, ignorance, destroys most quickly. Knowledge and strength of conviction have to go hand in hand. One can’t just rely on one or the other. (You hear me talking, Republicans?)

Others to try by H.G. Wells:
War of the Worlds
The Invisible Man

Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne (1864)

Congratulations to Jules Verne for having the oldest book on both lists. What an honor that must be for a dead guy with no internet. While really old fiction is somewhat difficult for me (mostly because I failed almost every history class I ever took and I need context, damn it, context!), I do enjoy Verne. And I can’t think of a better example of neonatal scifi. Most of his stuff reads like the travelogue-style writing popular in his day, which is always an interesting fictive device. And the lack of real scientific knowledge of the time makes for this wonderful, wide-eyed and hopeful tone that sucks the reader into the adventure completely. Plus? Subterranean dinosaurs. Bam.

More to try by Jules Verne:
Around the World in Eighty Days
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Tune in next week when we tackle The Fantasy List.