ShadowDance

Interview with Lois McMaster Bujold - Interviews (SD #60)

2010-03-26T10:06:00.005+02:00

Ms Lois McMaster Bujold became known to the Bulgarian readers with her most successful series - the Vorkosigan novels, dealing with the space adventures of Miles Vorkosigan. These books have inspired a strong and devoted following around here, to the point where we have actually never heard anyone dislike the Miles books. Ever. Following were some of her more recent fantasy novels, such as The Spirit Ring, the Chalion series and most recently the Sharing Knife series, building up to her fandom base. As admirers of Ms Bujold's work, it was a great pleasure for us to be able to do this interview with her.

Moridin

Shadowdance: The main characters in your books are often aristocrats of some sort. What is the reason for that and why do you reckon people like such protagonists even in a SF setting?

Ms Bujold: It is a source of some bemusement to me that my stories with aristocratic protagonists do seem to sell better than my stories with middle-class protagonists. (I’ve written both; the fact that you are more keenly aware of the first tells its own tale.) My theory is that high bio-social status is an in-built attractor, like sugar to the human palate, and for some of the same reasons.

Unlike the need for food and water and sex, status really hasn’t been studied much directly in the terms of evolutionary biology, which is the conceptual space in which I think it really belongs. But a person’s status, in a group -- and humans evolved in groups -- can have a profound impact on that person’s ability to access every other survival need. People in the throes of a perceived status emergency are at their most dangerous, just as if they’d been denied water or food.

But yes. Almost all people everywhere are partial to stories where the protagonists have or gain bio-social status. Most readers seem to want to identify upward, not downward. There is also, on the fairy or folk tale level, a deal of not-so-covert family psychology playing out, with kings as story-stand-ins for fathers, queens for mothers, princes as sons, princesses as daughters, and so on, which, quite literally, hits audiences where they live.

The other thing about upper-class protagonists is that they often have or seem to have more political agency, more room to move and drive the plot; more ability to act effectively. This, too, is attractive in a book’s characters. Genre readers want to read about people who are doing things.

Shadowdance: Your works in recent years have all been in the Fantasy genre. Do you intend to return to SF and Miles in particular, or is this change of direction permanent?

Ms Bujold: In fact, now the The Sharing Knife tetrology is finished and published (in English, at least), I am hard at work on a new Miles book for Baen. Work has been much interrupted this past year -- I had a perforated appendix last May and was writer Guest of Honor at the WorldCon in August, had a pinched nerve in my neck and a trip to Barcelona for a speech in November (simultaneously, unfortunately -- they showed me lots of Gothic cathedrals, ow…) and, of course, a book tour and a lot of PR duties for the 4th Sharing Knife book, Horizon, chores which won’t finish up till next week as I type this.

But I did read from the first two chapters of the new Miles book at WorldCon. I pick up with Miles at age 39, on an investigation as an Imperial Auditor to a new planet none of my readers has seen before (since I just made it up), and with a mostly-new cast of characters. The tale is mystery-suspense, and I was just able to finish Chapter 11 in January before I had to break off for the book tour. The book doesn’t have a title yet, nor a second half. I’m anxious to get back to it -- I really want to know what happens next!

I don’t know what I’ll do after that, besides take an overdue break to refill my well.

Shadowdance: Has Barrayar's transition from feudalism to spaceship technology and colonies in just two generations been influenced by a real-world nation?

Ms Bujold: Dozens of them. Barrayar since the end of its Time of Isolation is really a metaphor for the whole 20th Century. The Russian influence is obvious in its founder population, but another historical model I looked to was Meiji Japan and its forcible opening to the West.

Shadowdance: Do you intend to write more books in the Chalion world?

Ms Bujold: Possibly. I’ve become fascinated with series as artistic structures in their own right, as different from a novel as the novel is from the short story. But nobody on the academic side seems to be studying series in any comparative way, likely for practical reasons; while a professor of literature might be able to get a class of undergraduates to read and discuss half a dozen novels in the course of a semester, they’re unlikely to be willing to read half a dozen series.

Anyway, with the three live series I have written so far, I’ve done three different series structures. The Miles books were a chain of largely-independent novels all centering around one character, rather like C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books. The Sharing Knife was on the model of one huge story divided into volumes so as not to break readers’ wrists, like The Lord of the Rings. Chalion is or wants to be a different body plan -- in this case, a thematic series, with one book for each of the five gods. Which means I have a book each for the Mother and the Father still to go to complete the pattern. (Although I expect the Bastard, the trickster god, will have His thumb in every pie as usual.) Since the Father is the Chalionese god of justice, and the Mother the goddess of, among other things, medicine, there are lots of story possibilities here. But I haven’t committed to anything yet.

Shadowdance: Have you been accused of feminist tendencies in your works?

Ms Bujold: “Accused”? I wasn’t aware it was a crime.

Of course I’m a feminist -- a woman who isn’t a feminist would be like a slave in favor of slavery -- but that is one of those terms that one must check in every conversation in which it crops up, to be sure that all parties are using the same definition for it. What do you mean by “feminist”?

I’m also confused by your term, “feminist tendencies in my work”. I write about people; ideally, that should include every sort of human behavior, though I naturally gravitate to the sorts that most interest me. It’s my book; unless I write what I want, there’s no point.

I am not, however, writing to promulgate any particular agenda. Tolkien has a famous passage in which he describes the difference between allegory, which he cordially loathed, and applicability. “In one lies the freedom of the reader,” he sums up, “and in the other the purposed domination of the writer.” Should readers find my tales applicable -- and it’s clear that many do -- I am of course interested in how, but it’s hardly an effect under my control.

Shadowdance: What do you think of the recent "new wave" of Fantasy, heralded by names like Scott Lynch, R. Scott Bakker, Stephen Erikson, Hal Duncan etc.? Do you think the genre is finally moving away from the cliches most people associate it with?

Ms Bujold: I haven’t kept up with the recent genre in my reading, I’m afraid; I mostly read outside the genre for relaxation, or non-fiction for ideas. So I have little to say, here. (Although, in light of the prior question, I do wonder where the women writers are on that list.) I did run into Scott Lynch at the World Fantasy Convention a couple of years ago; he said he loved my books, and read them with considerable enthusiasm I gathered, so I suppose I should return the favor one of these days. I need to not be in the midst of writing something of my own at the time -- as a writer, I pick up voice like lint.

Shadowdance: Which of your books do you consider the most successful and which one made you feel like you were at the peak of your abilities?

Ms Bujold: Well, I’m not done yet, so the answer to this could change over time. And, in fact, has changed over time. The most hopeful answer would be, “A book I haven’t written yet.” That said, each of my books has elements that make them special to me. But I confess to a place in my heart for the more “ornery” books, the ones written in defiance of (presumed) genre or career expectations. These would include Mirror Dance, Memory, A Civil Campaign (which was also one of the most successful in publishing terms), The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls (a 40-year-old heroine, yay! Though Ista is starting to look pretty young to me these days), and the whole of The Sharing Knife. I think The Sharing Knife may be my subtlest work yet.
Shadowdance: Which one of your characters was the hardest to write about? Why?

Ms Bujold: Yeep. Well, any new character is a little harder to boot up in my brain, if I don’t know them very well yet. Each new viewpoint character re-wraps their universe, and not infrequently the plot, around themselves, which makes writing any novel with multiple viewpoints a little more challenging for me.

Shadowdance: What do you like about Japanese Animation (anime) and which is your favorite movie/show?

Ms Bujold: I’d known about anime for years, from having seen bits shown at SF conventions back as far as the mid-80s, and I’d dipped into it a little in the 90’s. But the video rental stores never had very much. Then I got a Netflix subscription, which is an online and mail-order DVD rental, with access to thousands of titles, so I was at last able to explore in earnest. I find I like best the shows with Japanese historical or contemporary settings, which show me that alien culture, and, unsurprisingly, the shojo or girls or josei or women’s styles of tales, or tales for general audiences. Giant fighting robots and endless hours of guys hitting each other, with or without swords, bore and annoy me -- Bleach, I’m looking at you, but not any more. I don’t much care for the uglier horror or crime stuff. I like older protagonists when I can get them, which is rarely. Some exceptionally interesting titles, so far, were: Mushi-Shi, Hikaru no Go, Otogi Zoshi, xxxHolic, Genshiken, The Story of Saiunkoku, Black Jack, anything by Miyazaki, Shonen Onmyouji, Get Backers, Descendants of Darkness, Fruits Basket, Mirage of Blaze, Witch Hunter Robin, Fullmetal Alchemist (though it gets dark and icky in spots), Kyo Kara Maoh, Antique Bakery, and Gokusen. No, I don’t remember all those titles; Netfix thoughtfully provides the subscriber with an on-line rental history to keep it all straight. I also get lots of non-fiction DVDs from Netflix -- science and nature, history and history of science, travel, engineering projects, and so on. I don’t have cable, and don’t watch much network TV at all these days.

Shadowdance: What do you think of writing workshops?

Ms Bujold: They can be useful, depending. (They can also be damaging, depending.) It’s important to remember that one is there to write and critique, and get better at writing, not to socialize, although that warning perhaps best applies to more informal critique groups. I’ve not been through workshops myself, though I’ve usually had a crit group. I don’t think they are necessary, if the writer can find the help she needs through other routes.

Shadowdance: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

Ms Bujold: Well, those are both good. Also, it’s important not only to read widely, but also to get people to talk to you about all sorts of their experiences, and to get many physical experiences yourself -- sports, work, travel, crafts -- because that creates your storehouse of memory from which the truly original elements of your work can arise.

Shadowdance: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

Ms Bujold: Except for one reader who posts in English on my chat group, I have only the vaguest notion of who my Bulgarian readers might be. But I certainly hope they may enjoy my work, and take what applicability from it as pleases them.

Interview with Kevin Anderson – Interviews (SD #59)

2009-01-28T13:21:00.011+02:00

ShadowDance: You've written in many established worlds – StarCraft, Star Wars, The X-Files, Dune etc. What constraints does such writing set and are there any perks in it that are not present when one writes in universes created by himself?

Kevin Anderson: When writing in an established universe the most important part is to be true to the characters, follow the rules established in the original movie or TV show, and make your work "feel" like another adventure in that world. Sometimes, the owners of the francise are very easy to work with and want to be creative with the author; other times, they are very restrictive. I have had good luck with most of my forays – in almost every instance, the owners (Lucasfilm, Chris Carter of the X-Files, Blizzard Entertainment for StarCraft, etc.) approached *me* to do the work, so they were already familiar with my writing. I find the job very enjoyable, and it really challenges my skills as a writer.

SD: How does the writing process go when you write under a contract for a book in another world, and when you write books in your own worlds? Which is faster/easier to write?

KA: There are more steps in the approval process when writing books in an established universe – I have to submit a detailed outline so that the owner can read and OK it before I start writing. For my own works – such as Saga of Seven Suns – I am the person who makes all the decisions. Neither is fast or easy to write, but each has its advantages and disadvantages. For Seven Suns, I could make everything up, but then I have an enormous amount of work to check facts and be consistent from one book to the next over the course of seven volumes. For something like Star Wars, there are a great many reference books, so I can get a specific answer – but then I have to follow it.

SD: Are you a big fan of any of the worlds for which you have written?

KA: Of course. Writing a novel is a very ambitious process requiring a lot of creative energy and enthusiasm. I could not devote my imagination, my time, or the hard work of writing a novel to something I didn’t love. I enjoyed Star Wars from its first release in theaters decades ago; I watched X-Files every week on TV even before Chris Carter contacted me; Dune has always been my favorite science fiction work of all time.

SD: The Dune prequels and sequels, written with Brian Herbert, have met with mixed feelings from readers and critics. How much did you intend for the new books to resemble Frank Herbert's original Dune series and what changes did you want to make?

KA: Well, that’s a somewhat unbalanced picture. Our Dune books have sold millions of copies in over a dozen languages worldwide, and there are maybe a hundred fans on the internet who have complained about them. We have received thousands of fan letters since the first book was published, and we receive 27 positive fan letters for every unfavorable letter. That’s about a 97% approval rating, and you’d be hard-pressed to find another series to match that. Our books have received the highest critical honors and have won or been nominated for many major awards.

Frank Herbert meant to write more Dune books, and unfortunately he did not survive to complete his work. Brian and I are not Frank Herbert, and we have never tried to copy his style or claim to be his equal. Frank Herbert is one of the greatest geniuses in the science fiction field and wrote the most incredible science fiction novel ever. However, Brian and I are telling more Dune stories, reawakening worldwide interest in the series, and filling the need. We have our own writing style, and we feel we have added a great deal to the Dune canon. We have introduced an entirely new audience to the books who had never before read Frank Herbert’s masterpieces.

SD: Which of the Dune books was hardest to write and why? For which did you have the least material from Frank Herbert to work with?

KA: Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune were the most difficult because – ironically, it might seem – we had Frank Herbert’s outline and his specific direction of where he envisioned the story going. Frank’s later books in the Dune series (Heretics and Chapterhouse) are very different in tone from the original novel, and many readers had difficulty with them. We had to reconcile those books with the other books in the series, follow Frank’s roadmap even in cases where we might have wanted to make the plot go differently, and tell a great story that *all* Dune fans would enjoy. It posed a lot of challenges.

We had the least direct material for the Butlerian Jihad trilogy, since that was "ancient history" in the Dune universe and we had only Frank Herbert’s general historical outline.

SD: In their attempts to actually start getting things done, many authors think up all sorts of rituals before sitting down to write. Do you have any such rituals?

KA: You’re assuming I ever *stop* writing! I like to start fresh in the morning. I exercise every day, shower, have coffee and breakfast, and then I get started as soon as I can, looking over my outlines of the chapters for the day, and then I write. I don’t have any special ritual, though.

SD: Do you have a specific place where it's easiest for you to write? And what writing tool do you use generally – you've said you often "write" into a dictaphone. Does that change the manner in which you compose/express the sentences/scenes in your head?

KA: I am a storyteller, and I love to talk about my characters, the settings, the plot twists and adventures. To me, the words come naturally when I speak them aloud, because I have trained myself to "talk" the sentences in my head, rather than type them, as most people do. I live in a very beautiful area in the Rocky Mountains, and I enjoy getting my exercise, hiking along trails, and dictating my chapters (which a typist then transcribes). I find that far superior to sitting in a chair and typing all day.

SD: You mostly write series. Has, at any point, a world in which you've written a lot of books gone "stale" for you? What would you do if that happened? Would you keep writing?

KA: Fortunately, even when I work on a long-standing series (7 books in the Saga of Seven Suns, 11 books so far in Dune, 54 total projects for Star Wars), I also have other stories in the works. This allows me to keep it fresh by switching from one book to another, letting me "recharge my batteries" in one universe while I am finishing a novel set in another. If I ever found my energy waning for a particular series, and I wanted to keep writing there, I would concentrate on other projects for a while to give that part of my brain a rest, and then tackle it with renewed enthusiasm.

SD: To what extent the opinion of readers/critics about a part of a series of yours has influenced the writing of the next part?

KA: You have to separate the real fans from the ones who just have an axe to grind and are going to complain, no matter what. The fans who say "I’ve hated every single book in this series, and I hate the new one even more!" are just making themselves look foolish and you can’t take them seriously.

I just finished traveling for 27 days to do talks and signings for Paul of Dune, meeting fans in 19 different cities around the US. I make many appearances at libraries, bookstores, and science fiction conventions, so I have a chance to talk with an overwhelming number of fans. I listen to their impressions, the things they are most excited about, the things they don’t like. By the time a novel is published, however, I have usually already completed the next book in the series, but I always listen to their comments and factor it into my plans for upcoming work.

SD: Which of your books do you consider the most successful and which one made you feel like you were at the peak of your abilities?

KA: I think that would have to be the Saga of Seven Suns – since it is one continuous story, it really counts as a single "book." I worked more than seven years on my life on this series, and I think it’s my masterpiece. I have never before conceived of such a vast, interconnected epic, and I do believe it turned out as well as I could have hoped.

SD: Your Saga of the Seven Suns series has been compared to some epic fantasy series. Why do you think is that and did you intend to create such impressions in the readers?

KA: That was definitely my intention. I have seen the very popular continuing fantasy epics of Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Terry Brooks (I don’t know if they are successful in Bulgaria, but they’re extremely popular in the US), and I wanted to do the same thing in science fiction, which is my favorite genre. In its format, Seven Suns is indeed like a fantasy, with different planets instead of different kingdoms, alien races instead of elves or dwarves, and it has the sweeping politics, battles, mythology, and a cast of characters like a fantasy novel.

SD: Saga of the Seven Suns is mostly described as a "space opera" kind of SF, which isn't a very widespread trend nowadays. Do you try to consciously challenge the conventions of the space opera in some way in your books and are you aware of them and the history of this "sub-genre" as you write, or you just write what you like?

KA: Space opera is enjoying a greatly renewed popularity in the US and UK, and my Saga of Seven Suns are bestsellers there, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. I think by modeling the giant story after a huge fantasy epic – which readers love – I have attracted an audience that might be turned off by the rather dense and indecipherable SF that some authors write.

This series is like my love letter to the genre, incorporating all the wonderful things I enjoy in science fiction – galactic empires, alien races, exotic planets, strange artifacts, sinister robots, space battles, and interesting ideas.

SD: How interested are you in the science part when writing "Science" Fiction novels?

KA: My university degree is in physics and astronomy, so I have a scientific background. However, I am most interested in telling stories set against a background of a vast and imaginative universe. I’m not writing a technical paper.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

KA: I had a workshop of professional writers when I was beginning my career and I received a lot of great critiques. I still use a close group of test readers to make comments on every one of my manuscripts, because I benefit from a fresh set of eyes. You need to be careful, though, to surround yourself with a group of other people who are serious about writing. I have seen workshops where the other members just talk and never get around to finishing anything. Those sorts of workshops are a waste of your time.

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

KA: Work hard and don’t give up – that really and truly is the most important part. Becoming a professional author is very much equivalent to becoming a professional athlete in a major sports team. You have to practice and practice and never stop trying to get better, and as you improve, you will see other areas to work on.

SD: What is your stand on the question of fanfics? Do you think it is a flattering practice, or you tend to dislike?

KA: The fans who write fanfic are obviously dedicated to a particular series. If they didn’t love it, why put all their energy into creating new works? However, there are copyright issues involved, and they can’t try to publish those works professionally. I wrote Star Trek fanfic when I was much younger and I learned a lot from the practice. But then I extended that to writing my own original material, which is how I became a successful writer.

SD: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

KA: Only my thanks to them. I know that very few American novels are translated and published in Bulgaria, and I have been very lucky that so many of my titles have been picked up by Bulgarian readers. I hope you keep reading, and enjoying – and I hope I can one day visit your country.

Interview with Patrick Rotfuss – Interviews (SD #59)

2009-01-28T09:34:00.006+02:00

ShadowDance: What do you think of the recent "new wave" of Fantasy, heralded by names like Scott Lynch, R. Scott Bakker, Stephen Erikson, Hal Duncan, Susanna Clarke, Naomi Novik, Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie and yourself? Do you think the genre is finally moving away from the cliches most people associate it with?

Patrick Rothfuss: I think the readers are eager to read good stories that aren't just rehashes of the same old thing. The publishers are realizing this, and so we're seeing more books that depart from some of the classic fantasy tropes.

SD: Does blogging and visiting fansites influence your creative abilities or your habits?

PR: Not really. I've written a satirical humor column for the local paper for the last ten years, so for me blogging is pretty much just doing the same thing, except now I put it online so my fans can read it.

SD: You've mentioned before that you are a "science geek". Have you ever thought about writing Science Fiction after you finish The Kingkiller Chronicle?

PR: Some people have referred to my story as "Science Fantasy" because I strive for realism, and one of my magic systems has a very logical framework that's based on thermodynamics.

That said, Science fiction doesn't really call to me that much. Most of the ideas I have for future stories are one type of fantasy or another. Fantasy is where my heart lies.

SD: Which period of SF's history do you consider the most successful and important – the Golden Age (the 40's & 50's), the New Wave, the 80's cyberpunk, contemporary fiction? Or any other?

PR: I don't know about most successful or important, but I have a real fondness for cyberpunk if it's done well.

SD: Do you think Fantasy has evolved enough to be divided into such periods?

PR: It's not a lack of evolution that keeps fantasy from being divided into periods like that. The only reason that works so well for science fiction is because that genre tends to linked very closely to the technology of the day. So what's believable and interesting to the reading public tends to change from decade to decade. Fantasy has more freedom that that.

SD: The Name of the Wind has done extremely well sales-wise. Why then do you think you had such a hard time finding a publisher for the book?

PR: The book had a lot of things working against it. I was an unknown author, and the book was really long. That means that it's more work for an editor to read, and more expensive for a publisher to produce.

But the main reason I think I had a hard time finding a publisher was that I didn't really know how to write a good query letter. I'm not very good at pitching the book. 9 times out of ten the book was rejected by someone who hadn't read anything but a query letter.

SD: Have you ever imagined a future movie adaptation of The Name of the Wind?

PR: Of course. I think all writers do, even if it's just a daydream.

SD: Do you think it is even possible for the book to be adapted for the big screen?

PR: Possible, but tricky. In this first book there aren't any swordfights, goblin armies, or big impressive magics. Those things obviously aren't necessary for a good story, but to date, most fantasy movies have been big-budget action-adventure extravaganzas. That sort of treatment won't work for my story. My story is interesting for reasons other than special effects, so those are where the focus would need to be.

SD: You've said your strongest side is "brevity". Which is your weakest one then?

PR: Plotting, probably. I've come to the realization that I don't think of plot the same way as most other writers. I don't understand the stereotypical Hollywood three-act structure that everyone else seems to familiar with.

Then again, I'm pretty happy not knowing. I think that's another thing that helps make my stories different.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

PR: They can be useful, depending on who is involved, but they really aren't necessary. The most important thing about learning how to write is writing, and thinking critically about writing. Everything else is just a matter of personal preference.

SD: Do you feel that active communication with other authors is productive for your writing, and do you think there is a place for solitary geniuses nowadays?

PR: I enjoy talking with other authors, but I don't know if it really helps my writing. So yeah, solitary genius is still in.

Talking with other writers *certainly* has helped my understanding of the publishing world though. It's been invaluable for that.

SD: If you could write any other famous SFF book, written in recent years, which one would it be and what would you have changed in it?

PR: I never really think, "I wish I could have written that book." Because I know that it would just be impossible. Sometimes I think, "I wish I could write a book as good as this." That happened just recently with Terry Pratchett's Nation.

SD: What do you think about the fanfics flooding the internet? Do you consider them a mockery of an author's work, or a way for a person to express their love for a certain book?

PR: I think they come from a loving place. No matter how an author feels about it, you have to admit that fanfic comes from people loving your characters and the world you've created. People rarely write fanfic about books they hate….

SD: Would you be flattered or insulted to find a fanfic based on your own works?

PR: There have already been a few. I've been flattered. I think it's cool.

Then again, the ones I read were pretty well done. They weren't like Star Trek/Name of the Wind crossover slashfic or anything like that. I might feel differently in that case.

SD: Do you think that the settled and secure life that most contemporary writers live weakens their ability to write dynamic stories? Is it necessary for a person to have lived through a real adventure, to be able to describe one convincingly?

PR: No. Not at all. It's an understandable thing for people to think, but when you really stop to consider, it's just ridiculous. Does that mean people have to be able to do magic to write about it? Do you need to live in 1943 to write about WWII? Do you need to be a serial killer in order to write a story about one?

No, of course not. That goes against the whole nature of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction writers ask, "What if…." Then we make up answers and turn them into stories.

SD: You've said your favorite SF story is Firefly. Why is that?

PR: What's not to like? You've got everything you could ever want in a story right there.

SD: Are you familiar with all of Joss Whedon's work?

PR: Oh hell yes.

SD: What do you think of his other TV series or comic books?

PR: Brilliant across the board.

SD: And most importantly – where can one find THAT T-shirt?!!!

PR: They sell them over at one of my favorite web comics: PVP. It's a reference to this strip.

http://www.pvponline.com/2005/05/10/tue-may-10/

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

PR: Practice your signature now. If you don't, you'll end up with a lame signature like mine, and everyone will make fun of you when you sign autographs.

SD: Thank you very much for this interview, Mr. Rotfuss!

Interview with Stephen Baxter - Interviews (SD #58)

2009-01-26T12:10:00.000+02:00

Stephen Baxter is one of the most acclaimed names in British science fiction, and a man deeply immersed in the traditions and history of both the science and the fiction. He's vice president of the the H.G. Wells society in England (he also wrote a sequel to the legendary Wells' novel The Time Machine). He's been a close friend to the late Arthur Clarke (with whom he co-authored the Time Odyssey series) and is one of the increasingly dwindling in number writers of so-called "hard" science fiction. Mr. Baxter teaches physics and mathematics and often participates in British and international scientific projects as a consultant. He kindly agreed to do this interview for his Bulgarian readers who've recently had the possibility to enjoy many of his works.

Trip

ShadowDance: Your books are especially valuable for their scientific background. Where do your ideas come from – unsolved questions, posed in modern science, for which you seek answers; or mankind's imagination on which you can elaborate thanks to your knowledge of science?

Stephen Baxter: I have a background in science myself. I've always been interested most in hard sf, which draws ideas from science. I try to keep up with new developments, and I get involved in science-based projects too. I have worked on study projects with the British Interplanetary Society and am on an advisory committee regarding the search for aliens. So my ideas come from interesting stuff in all this mix, especially the fringe questions: what is the far future of the universe; why don't we see aliens all around us?

SD: In your works you describe different epochs of humanity's lifespan – ranging from the far future, to the current times and then to our past and evolution. Which of these periods was the hardest to write about? What ignited your interest in humanity's ancient past? It's a somewhat unusual topic among sci-fi writers.

SB: I became interested in our past when I learned how recently the other hominids died out - Neanderthals maybe 30,000 years ago, maybe some species like those in Indonesia more recently. So we evolved in a landscape full of other kinds of hominids. Now they're all gone and we're alone – which is unusual; there are many species of dolphin, whale, etc. I have developed an idea that we long for the Other - God, or the alien – because we're lonely, and we don't know why. So it's valid stuff to write about in science fiction.

SD: One of your most acclaimed books is The Time Ships, written as a sequel to the famous H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. What inspired you to write this novel – the challenge to stand up to Wells' work, your love for the original book or maybe simply liking time-travel stories? The critics and the fans consider the experiment very successful. Do you?

SB: It was a love of the original book, which ended on a cliffhanger when the traveller went off into time for the second time. What happened to him? And also at the time I wanted to write a big history-changing novel, and thought that Wells's story could be a good starting point. Since then I've learned much more about Wells, and am now in fact a Vice President of the H.G. Wells Society. So yes, it was a successful experiment.

SD: Sadly, Sir Arthur Clarke, one of the greatest names in the genre, left us this spring. You've had the chance to work with him on the Time Odyssey series that were recently also published in Bulgaria. What was the feeling for you, working with him? Did you learn something valuable, did you maybe manage to teach something?

SB: I first met Sir Arthur C. Clarke in 1992, when my first novel Raft was nominated for the Clarke Award, for the best novel published in the UK. My publishers sent Arthur copies of my next few novels, and Arthur was particularly taken by The Time Ships (1995), my sequel to Well's The Time Machine. In a way this was our first meeting of minds. He responded with a kind blurb, and with correspondence: he sent me a copy of the H.G. Wells Society's magazine, and even a little collectors' postcard of Wells himself. That was how my name entered the frame a couple of years later when Arthur was looking for a new collaborator for the book which became The Light of Other Days (2000). Starting from a fairly open-ended outline by Arthur, we kicked around ideas and outlines for some months before getting down to work, corresponding by email and phone. Collaborating on a book, he would call, full of ideas, when it was convenient for him in Sri Lanka, sometimes at five in the morning UK time: "This is Arthur, over and out!" It was a joy and a privilege to work with a man who had such a profound influence on my life.

SD: Which period of sci-fi's history do you consider the most successful and important – the Golden Age (the 40's & 50's), the New Wave, the 80's cyberpunk, contemporary fiction? Or any other?

SB: I think possibly the end of the nineteenth century was extremely important. Writers like Verne, Wells and Lasswitz set out the basics of modern science fiction. The American pulp movement was important, but began with reprints of Verne and Wells. But in terms of success I think today's writers are producing work as good as it's ever been. Just in Britain we have fantastic writers like Ian McDonald and Paul McAuley producing work that couldn't have been written 20 years ago. So maybe today is the best.

SD: Are you familiar with the works of East European sci-fi authors, such as Lem or the brothers Strugatski? What is your opinion about them?

SB: Lem, yes. As a kid I loved such pieces as the Prix the Pilot stories. And later I was profoundly moved by Solaris, the novel. I've always thought there should be more translation between the languages. But then, a lack of translation means that different cultures have grown up in different regions. East European / Russian fiction seems to have a deeper, mystic feel than some American works.
SD: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

SB: I believe my Manifold series is available in Bulgaria. This series is about one of the deepest questions we face, I think: the Fermi Paradox. If aliens exist, some of them should have spread across the galaxy, and we should see them. Why don't we? Maybe we're alone, maybe they're hiding, maybe it's a dangerous universe where you can't travel. I think with new radio astronomy techniques and the new planet-finding telescopes we will soon have much more information about life in the universe, and may have an answer to the question by, say, the end of this century.

Thank you!

Interview with Charles Stross - Interviews (SD #56)

2008-10-09T19:14:00.000+03:00

Often compared to such writers as Alastair Reynolds and Richard Morgan, Charles Stross is a part of the new wave of hard sf authors. His first novel Singularity sky was nominated for the Hugo award in 2003 and was published recently in Bg. Since then the author has been nominated for a number of awards, winning in the last two years the Prometheus award and the Locus award. Before he went on to become a SF writer Stross has worked on RPG-s. An interesting fact is that the Planescape: Torment races - the Ghitzarai and the Githyanki are his creation. The author was kind enough to agree to an interview with ShadowDance. Enjoy

Moridin

ShadowDance: You've been described as a cyberpunk/postcyberpunk author. Do you like such labels and if yes, how would you label yourself?

Charles Stross: Nope.

I was, of course, about as heavily influenced by the cyberpunks as you'd expect of any not-very-worldly teenager growing up in the late 1970s to early 1980s; I was hit hard by Neuromancer, and it took me a good five years to shake off the surface glitz and start thinking analytically about what it all really meant.

But I am not a cyberpunk.

The Cyberpunk wave in written SF was rooted in the 1980s, a period when (in the west) a major wave of right wing political reaction to the period of the 1960s and early 1970s was breaking. It was a period dominated by corporate raiders, increased internationalization of big business, the brief ascendancy of Japan as a superpower, and huge and pervasive attacks on the social and cultural commons – attacks which were so successful that the entire centre of political discourse was shifted to the far right for a generation. (There are signs of a slow shift back towards the centre, but that sort of thing takes a long time to establish itself.)

Writers write about their hopes and fears for the present – and SF writers reflect these hopes and fears via speculation about the future. The preoccupations of the cyberpunks with a world dominated by huge, faceless corporations, with ordinary people living a debased and degraded life on "the street", seem almost quaint these days. We're living in the future they were writing about – as William Gibson demonstrated in Pattern Recognition and Spook Country it is now possible to write cyberpunk fiction *set in the past*.

SD: In your two novels published in Bulgaria – Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise – you describe a universe which is a result of a time-paradox, but where time-travel is forbidden. Can we expect from you to break this taboo in the forthcoming books of the series?

CS: No, because there will be no more books in that series. (The internal structure has inconsistencies -- not obvious in those two books – such that I can't go back to them and make it work for me.)

SD: Which of your books do you think defines your interests in literature best?

CS: Possibly Halting State, which (ironically) might come nearest to fitting the definition of "cyberpunk". It's a near-future police procedural novel, set in an independent Republic of Scotland, in a world where the online roleplaying games and VR environments such as Second Life have become pervasive, integral parts of everyday existence. It's my best shot (so far) at predictive near-future SF.

(On the other hand I might just be focussing too much on it right now because I'm currently planning the sequel, 419 – a novel about spam, and where it's going.)

But I do a whole range of different types of SF; the two Eschaton novels aren't exactly typical...

SD: Have you ever included yourself as a character in your own books? If yes, which one?

CS: Nope, never done that.

SD: Do you think that the settled and secure life that most contemporary writers live weakens their ability to write dynamic stories? Is it necessary for a person to have lived through a real adventure, to be able to describe one convincingly?

CS: I hope you'll excuse me for saying this, but writing is a very unstable and insecure life! It's badly, erratically paid (except for a very lucky few), and there's no obvious career ladder, so most authors have to hold down other jobs at the same time and have done other things in the past.

The question of adventure is an interesting one. Do you need to have served in a military organization in time of war to write war fiction? Should one be an astronaut before one can write fiction set in outer space? I think the only sensible answer is "obviously not", because if you pick the alternative answer and take it to its logical conclusion you end up requiring all aspiring fantasy writers to have personal experience of dragons, Dark Lords, and so on. (Which is somewhat unreasonable.)

On the other hand, there's a reason most novelists don't publish significant work before the age of 30. You need life experience, and lots of it, and insight into how other people think, before you can write convincing fiction about characters who the reader will care about. (And the flip side of this point is that lot of SF writers -- myself, for example -- start publishing short stories a long time before they're ready to do novels; the exigencies of characterisation are much weaker in the shorter forms, and the availability of magazines and anthology markets means that it's possible for writers who're still learning their craft to get some feedback in public.)

SD: The Speculative Fiction genre constantly conquers new territories not only with the help of highly regarded "mainstream" authors like Murakami, Cunningham, Pyncheon and McCarthy, but also thanks to SFF authors like Mieville, Vandermeer, Duncan, Gaiman etc. Do you think this is a sign for what literature is going to look like in the near future?

CS: That's really a question for somebody else to tackle.

SD: When you start writing a story, do you try to avoid certain cliches and tropes, or you don't concern yourself with that as long as the story works?

CS: It depends what I'm trying to achieve with the story.

Cliches are only cliches because they've been over-used. If you can think of a new angle to use to look at an old stand-by, then it stops being a cliche.

And sometimes it's helpful to use cliches. Readers know what they are; they're comfortable bits of furniture that don't force the readers to think too hard about what's going on, so you can lead them to focus on the important new stuff you're trying to introduce. (Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise used that technique – lots of space operatic cliches wrapped around some new ideas, to make the new stuff easier to deal with. In Accelerando I dropped the padding; the result is a difficult, dense novel that some readers love but others have lots of trouble getting into.)

On the other hand, sometimes there's a huge gain to be made by forcing yourself to invent everything anew. In Halting State -- a novel in the near future, preoccupied with computer crime – I forced myself to abstain from using the words "software", "computer", and "program" (and a bunch of other technical terms) deliberately, because I wanted to convey the idea that these things are an intrinsic part of society, not something notable in their own right. (Just as we don't usually describe the type of engine in an automobile or aircraft when we're talking about driving or flying somewhere.) I also adopted the discipline of the Mundane SF manifesto and refused to use any non-existent technologies or sciences in the book -- because I was looking for a believable future. Obviously there'll be stuff in ten years time that *isn't* believable right now because it hasn't been discovered or developed yet -- but if I permitted the novel to contain stuff that's obviously imaginary, it would sacrifice its right to claim to be at least reasonably predictive. (And I was trying to write a predictive novel.)

SD: Do you feel that active communication with other authors is productive for your writing, and do you think there is a place for solitary geniuses nowadays?

CS: Writing is a solitary occupation -- it's probably one of the last remaining creative niches where a single person does 90% of the work -- and so it tends to attract solitary geniuses... and solitary idiots (who shun feedback that might educate them).

On the other hand, most of us chat like crazy! Writing, being a solitary occupation, is even worse for those of us who do it full time; we don't have the social contact most folks get by going to work every day. So we chat, via the internet, blogs, email, and so on -- and we go to conventions and get out and meet people. As the business of fiction is the exploration of the human condition, you can't really do that unless you like or are at least interested in other people.

SD: How does blogging and visiting fansites influence your creative abilities or your habits? Have you ever been in a situation when you knew what your readers expect/want from a book of yours before it was finished? If yes, what did you do about it?

CS: I actively engage in dialogue with my fans. But I also enjoy surprising them! So I try not to do exactly what they expect...

SD: Have you been strongly influenced by another author? If yes, who?

CS: I'm influenced by too many authors to enumerate.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

CS: It depends how they're run -- but when they're run well, they're indispensable. I learned much of my craft through workshopping, and I wouldn't be where I am today without them.

On the other hand, a workshop won't improve your writing if you don't have the urge to write in the first place. And you won't get anything out of a workshop process unless you're willing to listen to people bearing bad news about your work – and to listen critically, filtering out subjective criticisms but listening to reasonable ones. (There's always a proportion of an audience – I think around 20% – who *never* like whatever story they're reading. You learn to recognize this and discount it. On the other hand, you need to learn to recognize when someone didn't like your story for a specific reason that you can do something about – and you need to act on it.)

SD: How important do you think Science Fiction is in general?

CS: In the USA (and the UK), Science Fiction is about 2.5% of the published fiction market. It is, however, about 30% of the Hollywood high budget movie output, and accounts for a big share of TV and computer games.

In absolute terms, I'm not sure we're individually important. But collectively, we can exert huge pressure on society – and sometimes one of us comes up with an idea that is so huge it outlasts us. (I'd cite George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 as one example of the impact SF can have on broader society.)

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

CS: Yes: don't go into writing if you want to get rich! You need to want to write, not because you want to live the lifestyle of a rich and famous writer. It's a sordid, underpaid, insecure occupation, and only a madman would want to do it. (Yes, I'm not entirely normal. I admit it...).

SD: If you could choose, which one of your books do you think should be published in Bulgaria next?

CS: Probably The Atrocity Archives. Just to demonstrate how different my other writing is...

Interview with Richard Morghan - Interviews (SD #56)

2008-10-09T18:11:00.000+03:00

Richard Morgan is well known name not only on the world SF scene, but also in Bulgaria. His latest SF novel Black Man/Thirteen (published in Bg as Variant 13) has recently won the Arthur Clarke award. After that Morgan switched genres with his newest book - The Steel Remains. Opinions about it vary, but they unanimously agree that it's a really provocative Fantasy story. Mr. Morgan has kindly agreed to do an interview with ShadowDance in which you may read his thoughts on the art of translation, political correctness and his future plans.

Moridin

ShadowDance: In Bulgaria Altered Carbon was published under the title Supercommando. You've mentioned in other interviews that you're not bothered by your books having different titles abroad. Still, aren't you afraid that these changes may send the reader the wrong message and lead to a disappointment when the book isn't what they expected it to be?

Richard Morgan: Well, that is always a risk, yes. But I guess you’ve got to assume your various publishers know what they’re doing with the market – I don’t imagine they want to sell less of my books! Supercommando does sound a little off-centre for the subject matter of Altered Carbon, but I suppose in very broad terms it does describe Kovacs, more or less. So I don’t know – you tell me. Am I popular in Bulgaria? Has the marketing worked? Maybe the readers who were looking for straightforward military SF under that title have been charmed by my unexpectedly subtle vision… :) And if they haven’t, well – too late, I guess!

SD: Regarding Altered Carbon, it was indeed very successful. One could say the book made you popular in Bulgaria and has sold out, with people still searching for copies. We don't know if the book's success was simply because of its title, but we doubt it ;) However, I'd like to ask you a more general question concerning this, if you don't mind. How much freedom do you think a translator should have? Choosing another title is one thing, but what about changing the text itself to better suit the cultural environment of the targeted readers?

RM: I think a translator should be free to adapt *stylistically* as much as they like, ie to re-shape the language as much as necessary to convey a fluid and idiomatic translation – that is after all what being a good translator entails. But once it comes to changing the *substance* of the text, I'm very much against the idea; it seems to me that such a step simply leaves too much room for abuse. You'd have dictatorial regimes everywhere only allowing "authorised" versions of books that didn't upset their political and cultural world view, and individual translators or publishers deciding that they knew better than the author how some aspect of the novel should be developed. And the worst of it would be that people would be unaware of the trick. They'd truly believe they were reading what the author intended them to read – which might in some ways protect them from culture shock, or make them like the book more than they otherwise might, but that isn't the point. Once you start to do this kind of thing, the book ceases to be a translation and can only really be described as "an adaptation", and – unless you label it clearly as such, in which case I don't think many people would buy it – that strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. The point is, you can't – or at least shouldn't – interfere with the original author's communication; that message has to be transmitted as accurately as possible, for better or for worse.

SD: Can you tell us anything about the forthcoming Altered Carbon movie?

RM: No, not really. Or at least, I can’t tell you much. It’s still in the works, still grinding through the Hollywood machine. The last I heard, the movie was scheduled for a 2009 release date, and had a director attached, one James McTeigue, who directed V for Vendetta and was also assistant director on the Matrix movies. But as to what all that means in real terms, well… that’s anybody’s guess. Keep your fingers crossed!

SD: Should we expect more Takeshi Kovacs novels?

RM: Not for the foreseeable future, no. First and foremost, that’s because I now have a stack of other work to pursue. But also, my problem after Woken Furies was that I couldn’t see where else to take the character that wouldn’t just be a re-tread of previous work. I hate the idea of turning into a genre series hack, churning out endless, soulless clones of the same book year after year – and with Kovacs that looked to me like a very real danger. That said, if I ever find a way to bring him back with any credibility, I’ll do it. I miss the old bastard as much as anyone!

SD: The city of Altered Carbon is called Bay City. Is this name an intentional homage to Raimond Chandler, or was it chosen for a different reason?

RM: No, I don’t recall Chandler’s use of the name, so if it is from that source, then it’s unconscious. There is a real Bay City (in Michigan, I think) but it’s quite a small town, nothing like the city I imagined for the novel. And I seem to remember that a Bay City, either that one or possibly another invented one, appeared in a book by Eric Van Lustbader that I read as a teenager. But in the end, I think what it comes down to is that wherever I’d heard the name, I just liked the way it sounded. Also, I’d spent time in San Francisco and its surroundings, and it always struck me that the whole bay area really seemed like a single urban entity, rather than the collection of different cities and towns it is currently defined as. I’ve been told since, by a number of Californians, that most San Francisco or Oakland residents would rather die than see their city subsumed into a whole this way. Sigh. Oh well, that’s the benefit of writing SF, I guess – you make up whatever you like, whatever you need for the story.

RM: Well, I certainly hope so. There’s no doubt that, as a genre, SFF is better poised than most other types of literature to take on the 21^st century – more than ever before, we live in science fictional times. And yes, novels by the genre writers you mention (and you should include Geoff Ryman in that list as well) are increasingly offering a bridge into a more generalized literary terrain. But at the same time, it’s important to realize that snobbery and hierarchical dynamics are an endemic part of human nature, so the attitude of the mainstream critical establishment isn’t likely to shift very fast. Those guys don’t want to accept SFF as valid fiction, because too much of their own sense of superiority is bound up in their attitude. That kind of thing, like any other type of knee-jerk prejudice, is very hard to beat. So guys like Murakami and Pynchon will continue to be defined as mainstream literature, however solidly they lean on the staples of the SFF field. And the rest of us will continue to be disparaged in literary circles as something less than valid. It’s a dynamic that has nothing to do with what’s really happening, and everything to do with how people want to see things. But what’s really happening is, yes, a loosening of the boundaries between genres, and that can only be a good thing.

RM: Not at all. This is fiction we’re talking about. Writing good fiction is a skill-set, and at base what it really amounts to is the art of telling convincing lies in narrative form. Climbing mountains, robbing banks, killing people with a knife or an assault rifle – these are other, entirely different skill-sets, and the fact you’re good at one or more of these activities is no kind of guarantee you’ll be any good at telling the story of how you did it afterwards. In fact, I can remember reading one book written by a famous mountaineer about his experiences and being surprised at how dull he managed to make it all seem. The things he’d been through ought to have been riveting, but the way he wrote it down was anything but.

However, what all these settled and secure writers (myself included) do need to do is accept, is that their lives are not very interesting in themselves and that for that reason they should really write about something else. There’s altogether too much introspective I’m-depressed-in-a-small-London-flat-and-mindless-job fiction out there, and it’s the result of writers – often technically very talented or skilled writers – believing that they themselves are an intrinsically fascinating subject for a novel.

Of course, this isn’t to say that life experience is not a valuable aid to writing good fiction. Travelling and living in other countries, teaching people from other cultures, living a varied and sometimes difficult life – all these things have fed into my fiction, have helped me develop a credible human dynamic in the story-telling. But you have to recognize that experience as nothing more than a handy raw material, something you borrow from and re-shape, if you have it to hand, or fake if you don’t. In the end I don’t believe it’s actually necessary. The only really indispensable thing a good writer of fiction needs is a first rate imagination. Everything else you can go dig up or research as and when you need it.

SD: And since you mention background research, how much do you stress on it in your work? Is it necessary to have all the background details at hand when you start writing, or do you feel confident to fill possible gaps as you go along?

RM: Different writers will handle this in different ways – but personally, I would die of boredom if I had to have all the background sorted out before I started writing. I don't tend to plan my novels very carefully at the start, I prefer to see where the initial inspiration will take me, and then do the necessary background reading and fact-checking as needed along the way.

SD: When you start writing a story, do you try to avoid certain cliches and tropes, or you don't concern yourself with that as long as the story works?

RM: The latter, definitely. Tropes and clichés exist for a reason – they are short-cut cultural descriptors, things that have worked well enough in the past to become embedded in our cultural consciousness. If you can make use of them in what you’re writing, then sure, go right ahead and do it. If you can’t, though, they still provide a useful starting point – you just break them apart to see what works better and why.

SD: Your forthcoming novel – The Steel Remains – is your first attempt at fantasy. You give rather strange definitions of the book ("Weird Old Epic Noir" being my favourite). Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about the novel and its sequels?

RM: About the sequels, almost nothing – I haven’t planned those books yet (and planning has never been my strong suit anyway), let alone started writing them. What they’ll contain is anybody’s guess. About The Steel Remains itself, I can only say that it is the fantasy novel I’ve always wanted to write, that it’s as brutal, bloody, overtly political and explicitly sexual as anything I’ve yet written, and that it has absolutely no real good guys in it. Think Kovacs with broadswords, and you won’t be far out.

SD: What do you think of the recent "new wave" of Fantasy, heralded by names like Scott Lynch, R. Scott Bakker, Stephen Erikson, Hal Duncan etc.? Do you think the genre is finally moving away from the cliches most people associate it with?

RM: Well first of all, that’s not something I’m really qualified to judge, because I have only the most cursory knowledge of this new wave. Ninety percent of the fantasy I’ve ever read was written before 1980. But from what I do know, I think it’s less a case of moving away from the genre clichés, and more a matter of re-wiring them at a raised level of engagement. For instance, Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates is replete with "clichéd" genre elements, but the genius of that book is not in the material itself. Erikson has chosen some well-worn fantasy staples – ancient races, pitched battles, dragons, magic – but what’s interesting is the level of human intensity he brings to bear on the tale. And clearly that’s got to be good for the genre – the more human your story is, the better literature it’s going to be.

SD: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer? What is it about the act of writing that gives you greatest pleasure?

RM: Strengths and weaknesses – well, that’s really not for me to say. You’d have to ask the readers. What I would say is that all my work is character-driven, with character interaction as the motive force for both plot and ultimately world-building too (I build the background in direct response to the back-story needs of the characters as they progress through the book). So those readers for whom plot is the major factor may feel that I don’t move fast enough, and those who love a map at the beginning of each volume and exhaustive detail on the landscape we’re passing through may also be disappointed. But if character development is important to you, then I’m your man. And certainly one of the things that gives me most pleasure in working on a book is watching the characters grow into themselves as the story progresses.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

RM: Whatever works for you. I’ve never attended one, but that proves nothing. I’ve never been surfing either, but I hear it’s great.

SD: What do you think about the fanfics flooding the internet? Do you consider them a mockery of an author's work, or a way for a person to express their love for a certain book? Would you be flattered or insulted to find a fanfic based on your own works?

RM: I haven’t actually seen any fanfic, so I only have the loosest sense of how it works. But I suppose imitation is always the highest form of flattery, and I can’t see how it would have a detrimental affect on my sales, so it would be hard to get pissed off about it. Beyond that, though, I confess I’m a bit mystified by the phenomenon. My question to the fanfic writers would be why, if you have the urge (and the technical skill) to write, would you choose to waste time aping someone else’s characters and settings? Why not just invent some of your own stuff, albeit influenced by what you’ve read and liked. Hell, you might even come up with something you can publish, and actually get paid for it!

SD: Black Man/Thirteen made it to neither the Hugo, nor the Nebula finals, even though the majority of readers labeled it as one of the best SF books of 2007. What do you think is the reason? Do you believe the American market is too conservative when it comes to

an author criticizing the American way of life?

RM: There is certainly an element of the US market which is conservative, but I’m not sure you can lay my failure to get a Nebula or a Hugo at its door. Black Man/Thirteen has sold very well in America, and has received some very good reviews from American critics. And it’s worth remembering that it was an American panel that handed me the John W Campbell award for Market Forces, a novel that’s savagely critical of American business practices, neo-colonial foreign policy and neo-liberal capitalism in general. So I’m inclined to blame bad luck rather than a political agenda. Maybe the overt critique of current trends in US politics did put some people off, but I think what’s more likely and more important is that there were just a lot of other good books out there and, well, they can’t all make it to a list that’s only five books long in each case. Besides which, (big grin!) I’m well contented with winning the Arthur C. Clarke award instead!

SD: What do you think about the blooming "political correctness" in America in recent years and don't you feel it is a form of severe censure? How does or will it affect literature in general and your works in particular?

RM: In fact, I think political correctness has well and truly bloomed, and is now on the decline. People have seen the damage it’s done, and there’s a definite backlash now. In a sense, it’s a great shame, because like a lot of ideas born on the ideological left, political correctness had a certain core value when it started out. (It’s good to make racism unacceptable, it’s good to stop the denigration of women for their sex, and so forth.) But unfortunately – also like a lot of leftist trends and tendencies – the original idea got hi-jacked by entirely the wrong people, and they fucked it up for everybody else. As to how all this affects me, I’m really none too worried. Despite the title change, Black Man came out in the US as exactly the same novel it was in the UK. Thing is, there’s a lot of talk about how the pc issue is going to affect freedom of expression, but I don’t see much hard evidence of it happening. I think we have far more to fear on that front from the right wing media machine, which has proven very adept at stifling free expression over the last thirty years.

SD: Do you feel that active communication with other authors is productive for your writing, and do you think there is a place for solitary geniuses nowadays?

RM: Well, I’m certainly solitary – don’t know if that makes me a genius! But seriously, no, I don’t find communication with other authors helpful – or unhelpful! – in my work. I find it socially very pleasant, stimulating at a personal level, and a nice change from what is, let’s face it, a very solitary profession. But as with most professionals, there is a marked tendency in such social events to (at least try to) avoid talking shop. In the end novel writing is work you have to do alone, and I find that suits me fine.

RM: No, that’s never happened to me. But anyway, as I said earlier, I write for myself. I’m not interested in what other people want out of me. If they can’t find what they’re looking for in my fiction, they just have to try someone else. That said, blogging and surfing do occupy rather a lot of my time these days – perhaps rather too much, especially as delivery deadline start to encroach…

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

RM: Know the market, and if you’re not prepared to write for it rather than for yourself, then be prepared instead to spend some time starving in your garret. Artistic integrity is wonderful, but before you commit to having some, you should be aware of what it may cost you. And work hard and don’t give up.

SD: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

RM: Uhm – hope you like the books.

Interview with Robert Wilson - Interviews (SD #55)

2008-05-29T09:29:00.000+03:00

Robert Wilson is a newcomer to the Bulgarian SF market with his books The Chronoliths and Spin, but he has instantly gained a wide readership in our country. ShadowDance sought him out and treated him to a long and rich interview, where Mr. Wilson shares details about his forthcoming books, writing in general, and of course, time paradoxes.

Moridin

Shadowdance: Your Bulgarian readers haven't yet had the pleasure to enjoy Axis, the sequel to Spin. Can you tell them what can they expect?

Robert Wilson: Spin was meant to be read as a stand-alone novel, not the first third of a trilogy. But Axis and the as-yet unwritten Vortex follow humanity's interaction with the so-called Hypotheticals to its conclusion. Axis, as the title might suggest, is a pivotal book -- it introduces new characters and opens a door into the farther future. Vortex (which I mean to begin setting down on paper this month) concludes the sequence and twines together the fates of both humanity and the galactic "entity" that has transformed it.

I want these three to be very different books, not installations in a seamless narrative. Axis takes place over a shorter span of time than Spin and adopts a different narrative strategy (which I think surprised and unsettled some readers). Vortex will return to the large scale of Spin, though from a very different angle.

SD: Spin and Axis are parts of a trilogy. Do you intend to wrap up all storylines, or leave some of them open?

RW: I don't know about wrapping up all the storylines, but I do hope to answer some of the big questions posed in the first book.

SD: Have you ever included yourself as a character in your own books? If yes, which one?

RW: In the literal sense, no, never. But every writer invests some of himself, good or bad, in his characters. I guess my closest approach to a self-portrait is Adam Hazzard in the forthcoming novel Julian Comstock: A Story of the 22nd Century. He functions in a kind of cloud of naivite, idealism, irony, and dumb luck, which pretty much defines my life and career to date.

SD: Do you think that the settled and secure life that most contemporary writers live weakens their ability to write dynamic stories? Is it necessary for a person to have lived through a real adventure, to be able to describe one convincingly?

RW: Interesting question. A few points come to mind:

1) The life of most writers I know is hardly "settled and secure," though I admit that the writers I know are North Americans living in a fairly secure environment compared to, say, Rwandans, Tibetans, or Haitians.

2) What constitutes an "adventure?" Does every writer have to be Jack London or Earnest Hemingway? Is that really a desirable outcome?

3) Young writers are generally advised to "write what you know." If you haven't worked on a shrimp boat, don't write as if you have. If you must have the shrimp boat, do some research, talk to a shrimper.

SF and fantasy render the whole question problematic, though. If you're writing about the fate of a planet, you're obliged not to confine your point of view to, say, suburban Los Angeles. The experience you bring to the story must be, in some sense, vicarious. You have to do your homework.

4) Fear, anger, dread of mortality, love, ecstasy: all these emotions are part of the common human heritage, however experienced or expressed. All of us are entitled to talk about them with a certain authority. If we couldn't partake of the pain and joy of human beings not ourselves, we wouldn't be fully human. And imagining yourself into the skin of another person is what literature is all about.

SD: When you start writing a story, do you try to avoid certain cliches and tropes, or you don't concern yourself with that as long as the story works?

RW: Every writer works within a tradition and has to come to some understanding with the literature as it exists. We speak to our antecedents as well as to a contemporary audience. Cliches and "tropes" can be ignored, used, bent, deconstructed, reconstructed.

Most of the "tropes" of science fiction were already present in the work of H.G. Wells, for instance. You don't write a time travel story without Wells hovering over your shoulder. I suspect one of the errors young SF writers make is to reiterate what they love about the genre without questioning it. You shouldn't just write science fiction, you should interrogate it.

SD: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer? What is it about the act of writing that gives you greatest pleasure?

RW: I hesitate to catalogue my own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe my strength is that I'm painfully aware of weaknesses.

The greatest pleasure in writing is in the creation of a finished narrative, a Whole and Complete Work -- at least for those few hours or days before you begin to agonize over the flaws in it.

SD: The social element seems very important in your works. What is more important to you - the fates of the main characters, or the global changes in society, that are the topics of books like Spin and The Chronoliths?

RW: They're inextricably combined. As I've said before, the apocalypse isn't the apocalypse if it's experienced solely by Captain Future. I'm fascinated by the place where the human perspective intersects the imperatives of time, evolution, mortality. Very interesting territory. Not divisible into "character" and "setting," in the conventional sense.

SD: What is it that attracts you to time paradoxes?

RW: Am I attracted to time paradoxes? Admittedly, that's at the heart of The Chronoliths -- the idea of time travel as an out-of-control feedback loop, operating in the medium of human expectations. I think it emphasizes the way the (human, cultural) future is shaped by our fears and hopes and expectations.

SD: Has there been a point when you doubted whether you should continue writing?

RW: Has there been a point when I didn't? Ten years passed between my first short-story sale and my second. The doubt is perennial. If I persisted, it was only out of a dumb, almost autistic stubborness. I made a modest success of it, though I wonder how many people in the same position never do -- and whether there are alternate worlds where I'm still working clerical jobs and writing amateur fiction on weekends.

SD: Have you been strongly influenced by another author? If yes, who?

RW: Too many to name, and the names change on a regular basis.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

RW: They seem to work well for some people. I always avoided workshops, myself. Not out of snobbishness but a sense of my own vulnerability. I didn't want to share my work until I felt it was at least defensible.

SD: How important do you think science is in Science Fiction?

RW: That's a question every sf writer has to answer for himself. I think my own work displays a respect for science, though no one would call it scientifically rigorous. I think what we're dealing with in SF isn't "science" so much as the the scientific worldview -- the vision of the universe bequeathed to us by Darwin, Lyell, Einstein, Hawkings. Where is humanity in that cosmos, and what does it mean to us? That's a literary question worth addressing, and sf has developed some remarkable tools for addressing it.

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

RW: Learn to surf your own doubts and ambitions. Trust neither. Writing is a slippery business.

SD: If you could choose, which one of your books do you think should be published in Bulgaria next?

RW: Well, I've taken a break from the Spin sequence to write a long book called Julian Comstock, set in a resource-depleted 22nd Century. (It borrows the history of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, grafting that narrative onto a post-collapse North America.) I think it's my best work, and I'd love to see it translated. The English version is due out April 2009.

SD: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

RW: Gratitude for the positive reception they've given my work.

Interview with Hal Duncan - Interviews (SD #54)

2008-04-15T10:52:00.000+03:00

Hal Duncan is among the brightest new stars of western SF. His dualogy The Book of All Hours is considered one of the most serious, unconvetional and innovative works in the genre. Actually... which genre? Mr. Duncan was so kind as to answer ShadowDance's questions and below you can read about genres, 3D time, writers' workshops, homophobia, political correctness and much more. And, oh yes, about Vision.

Roland

ShadowDance: The Book of All Hours series is definitely not for every taste. It demands an effort from the reader that nowadays not everyone is willing to, or even capable of, making. What was your books' target readership and do you think they reached those people?

Hal Duncan: This is a hard question. There's a part of me that just thinks of myself as the target, or that narrow set of readers with the same tastes as me, the ones who'll get all the weird and obscure stuff I think is cool. Yes, that might mean alienating other readers who don't "get" that stuff, but so what? Why water it down, take out all the stuff that I find interesting, just because someone might not like or understand it? You'll just end up with something unadventurous, unambitious and uninteresting. What's the fucking point? So in some respects I guess my target readership is just whoever has the same quirky tastes as me, which I guess means people looking for something sort of... rich and meaty.

BUT... there's another part of me that wants to do more than just "preach to the choir". That's something Scott Bakker talks a lot about, and I totally agree. I don't want to limit my target readership to people with the same tastes as me, because I think, for example, of the outcast teenager growing up in some nowhere town and dealing with a world of shit, the sort of kid who reads SF/Fantasy to escape because if they didn't they might fucking kill themself. They're not looking for some ponderous literary tome inspired by Joyce and Borges, but I want to reach that kid and blow their mind the way PKD or Delany did to me, because the great thing about genre fiction is that it can do that. And if you're writing about things like homophobia, say, it's way more important to reach that outcast teenager than it is to reach some twenty-something graduate living in a nice cosy bohemia with all their boho mates around them.

But that puts you in a tricky situation, right? How do you make your work populist enough that this kid will pick it up just cause it looks kind of cool without compromising on the richness, the meatiness, without making it just another blockbuster? What you can do, I think, is make the books work on multiple levels, give readers a ride they can enjoy even if they don't completely "get it". The idea is that if you can just get the reader to give in and go along with the flow, maybe they'll have enough fun that they'll go back to it later, put in that effort over multiple readings.

The wonderful thing is, I think, that's paid off. I've had a lot of positive feedback from people you'd expect to be sympathetic, like other writers or readers of "literary" fiction, people who'll put in the effort on a book of such crazy ambition. But I've also had fan mail from kids who just thought it was fucking cool -- a fourteen year old in the States, another who said it helped them get through a bad few months at a boarding school in Wales. I found fucking fanart on the internet just the other day. And that totally blows me away, that there are these younger readers who've picked it up looking for just another big commercial blockbuster and been swept away by it, loved it. Because even if they don't quite get it -- and some of them have said that -- they've gone back and re-read, and re-read and got a little more out of it each time. That totally fucking rocks.

SD: The detailed descriptions of various historical and mythological events and places in the series are overwhelming. How did you chose which events and characters to use in your story, and why? Was it difficult to combine so many alternate realities and persons that, together, form a coherent storyline?

HD: At the start I didn't chose at all, I guess. What I mean is I had this idea for a huge mad monster of a novel about the Book of All Hours, this ancient tome containing all of history and myth, everything ever written and everything never written. I knew the novel would be in four parts, based on the seasons and times of day, a mythic cycle structure, but with that central idea the question was not so much what to put in as what to leave out, and I just didn't know. Eventually I just had to give up on the idea; I was going insane trying to boil down all of history and myth to One Big Story.

About the same time however I had this other idea, the unkin -- the Cant, gravings, the Covenant -- as a way of tying all that history or myth together, but using it as a backstory. Within this synthesised mythos I could write any number of individual but interconnected stories, do each one as the idea came to me, build up the Big Picture of the War in Heaven through these little snapshots -- Phreedom's encounter with Metatron in Slab City, for example.

I managed to write a grand total of two stories in that mythos, before Jack came along and, well, just sort of blew those plans to fuck.

Thing is, Jack is basically my version of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, and I kind of fell in love with the character, so I found myself using him in all these wildly different narratives -- the expedition to the Caucasus in Vellum, the Berlin and Sodom storylines in Ink, the Jack Flash stuff in both. I had a whole load of ideas for stories with Jack and the other characters that came with him -- Puck, Reynard, Joey -- including one about The Bacchae being done as a Harlequin play at some point. None of this was tied to the unkin mythos or the Book of All Hours properly, but what I found was ideas like the Cant or the Book kept popping up all over the place. All these stories.

These were all originally meant to work as stand-alone stories, but because they were forming all these links with one another under the surface I found they simply refused to work that way, in draft after draft. A lot of this stuff I was working on for years before I finally realised that the stories only really worked when read together, that there was another larger story I was trying to tell. Even then, as I thought about using the four-part structure to tie it all together, to bring out that bigger story, I still thought of it as more of a collection of individual pieces than as the diptych of Vellum and Ink. That larger story was very much on an abstract level.

It was only after I'd written the Phreedom and Thomas narratives that make up most of the first volume that I realised what I was actually dealing with -- this story about Thomas's death and Jack's redemption -- and that I'd have to smash everything up, rip it apart and put it back together. But as soon as I did everything just started to click. I knew the characters and their storylines so well by then that, really, fitting it together and filling in the gaps -- like the whole Finnan storyline of the second volume -- was like putting the right colour of tiles into the right places to construct a mosaic which I already had a picture of in my mind.

This maybe sounds a little crazy, treating the book like it's got a mind of its own, but with tBoAH it sort of feels like the book wrote itself over the decade or so I was working on it, like that original seed of an idea just spread its mycelia through my work, grew and took shape of its own accord, while I was blithely unaware of what was happening, thinking I was writing this story or that when all the time I was actually working on just the parts of this big-ass monster.

SD: How did the idea of "rewriting" ancient Greek texts occur to you, and have you thought about the possibility that the word-games in their new "translations" could be crippled when your books are translated in other languages? Do you think that such unavoidable losses of meaning in translation of such a complex text are crucial for understanding of the ideas you put in it?

HD: It started with the Sumerian texts of Inanna's Descent and Dumuzi's Dream. I wanted to retell those ancient stories with Phreedom as Inanna, Thomas as Dumuzi, but these were pretty obscure myths so I thought, OK, what if I put the actual text in there too, give the reader the actual myth that's being referenced so they're not like, Who the fuck is Dumuzi? You don't know the story of Dumuzi? Well, here it is, word for word. I wanted to be as faithful to the source text as possible, but of course I couldn't just steal someone else's translation, so I had to work out my own original adaptation. In the end I found myself going for readability over accuracy, fucking around with the text in a way that an academic would probably be appalled by, but I don't think I've bastardised them too badly. At least I hope not.

So when it came to the Greek texts the fact that they're dramas added an extra dimension. All you have is dialogue, so you can update it, retell it, and add a new layer of meaning, simply by putting that dialogue in a different context. That's not a particularly new idea. Baz Luhrman did it with Romeo and Juliet, but it's been done for years on the stage, with Shakespeare plays or operas. Years ago, actually, I caught a BBC adaptation of Prometheus Bound which mapped it to the Russian Revolution, with Prometheus in a Russian army greatcoat, bound to concrete, like some Soviet dissident out of favour with Zeus as Stalin. It took this ancient play and made it totally relevant to 20th century history. That was a pretty big influence in my own mapping of the play to WWI, the Red Clyde and such. Similarly, The Bacchae has a much wider relevance, I think, than many might expect. And the more you look into the sexual undercurrents of it the more it seems deeply twisted and juicy, which the Harlequin play setting allowed me to tap into, to bring out a whole layer of subtextual innuendo.

With both of these I ended up being looser with the source text, playing around with it to make it fit the "staging" more in places, fucking with it quite a lot at times actually. In the original text, Prometheus is dragged out by Might and Violence to be chained by Hephaestus, for example, so you have the obvious "translations" of Powers, Slaughter and Smith, all of which work as perfectly good names in English, but you don't have the same obvious translation with Io or Ocean. In the end, I found that having to be a bit more creative often opened up weird new ways of looking at the text I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

It's inevitable that much of that will be lost in the translations. In some respects, the other editions are ultimately going to be different books. But a good translator, if they can't translate a word-play directly, might be able to find some variant that works similarly in their own language, and what difference there is would be there anyway since alliteration and rhythm are things I use a fair bit, and any translation is liable to lose that. How much is lost I don't know unfortunately, because I can't read the translation, but I've worked with translators that I've thought: if anyone can pull it off they can. I'm actually kind of intrigued by the notion that a really good translator might even be able to add something. And given that the book is about a book which contains all books, and all their different versions, I kind of like the idea of it existing in slightly different incarnations. That kind of appeals to me.

SD: It seems that the decades of second-grade juvenile fantasy are largely done with. We see more and more character-driven and complex works like those of Stephen Erikson, R. Scott Bakker and yourself, that achieve commercial success and establish a firm footing in the genre. Is such development an evolution, or rather a surprise? What are your thoughts on, if we may call it that, that new "hard-fantasy" wave of works?

HD: To be honest, I think the symbolic formulation is still a large part of the market and always will be. There have always been readers who want "more of the same" and will happily devour the most formulaic drivel with uncritical devotion, which of course creates a pressure for publishers to pander to them with puerile crap. Bear in mind that Fantasy as a genre was only separated out from SF in the 70s in order to exploit a market of readers who read Tolkien and wanted "more of the same", so it's not surprising we've had decades of drearily derivative pap dominating the genre.

One result of that domination was, I suspect, writers preferring to market their work as SF. You look at the New Wave, or Interzone in the 80s, and you find SF being used as the default term for all sorts of strange fiction that wasn't really to do with science at all, but could just as easily be called fantasy or horror or slipstream. Where's the science in Delany's Dhalgren? What does Zelazny's Roadmarks have to do with plausible scientific speculation? Or Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet? Silverberg's The Book of Skulls? I grew up reading that sort of strange fiction, working on the principle that SF basically stood for "So Fuck", so I largely thought of myself as an SF writer in that mould. I never liked Tolkien so I wasn't interested in a genre that was basically defined by his imitators.

But I don't think it's that surprising that we're seeing more ambitious works of Fantasy gaining the limelight now. The combined field of the strange fiction genres -- SF, Fantasy and Horror -- has always been hugely innovative and experimental. The field was deeply diverse even from its beginnings in the pulps. It's always had this other set of readers who're really looking for "something different" -- and that community of fans includes the editors at the biggest New York publishing houses. Sure, they know that simply slapping a dragon on the cover will up the sales by a stupidly large percentage, but they also know that there's a market for ambitious works if you can just connect with it. And they'd much rather be publishing something good if they can. So we've always had great fantasy in the field. It's just that a lot of the time it was published as SF.

The labels have shifted in an interesting way over the last couple of decades. First, people started talking about that sort of strange fiction as "slipstream" rather than SF. Then, in the UK, Interzone shifted its focus away from that sort of fiction, and The Third Alternative took over as the main market for it. In the US, you had magazines like Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and indie press anthology series like Leviathan and Polyphony. And all of these markets were way more associated with "Fantasy" than "SF". So where we are now, I think, is that the default label for that sort of strange fiction is Fantasy rather than SF. If you published Roadmarks now it would be sold as Fantasy. The Book of Skulls definitely would. I suspect even Dhalgren would. Vellum and Ink are widely considered Fantasy, regardless of the fact that the whole 3D time thing is basically an SF conceit. Hell, even the "magic language", the Cant, is actually (albeit sneakily) described as being consistent with thermodynamics. It's not Hard SF, but then neither is the jaunting in Bester's The Stars My Destination. I think a lot of what we're seeing is Fantasy taking over from SF as the default label for stuff which doesn't fit a particular generic mould.

I think there is probably also a maturity developing in the balls-out, straight-down-the-line Epic Fantasy, with writers like Erikson and Bakker, or Wolfe and Martin for that matter, but I'd have to say I'm not the best person to talk about it from that angle as I don't really read much in that area. I'm more into the type of fantasy you get from Jeff Ford, Jeff VanderMeer, Kelly Link, writers like that. Or, if I want good old-fashioned action and adventure, something with dirigibles. Blowing up, preferably.

SD: More and more mainstream writers use tropes and techniques from Speculative Fiction. Everybody knows about the forays in SF of writers like Pynchon, McCarthy and Murakami, and of the increasing complexity and "cross-genreing" of works inside the field. Do you feel that this convergence is a sign of what literature will be like in the future?

HD: I hope so. When I talk about that market of readers for "something different", and that sort of strange fiction we used to call SF and now call Fantasy, I think part of the reason the field has been so rich in this respect is simply because the pulps became a refuge for writers with certain quirky visions and ambitions during a period when, at least in the UK and US, a backlash against Modernism made it hard to write anything that wasn't contemporary realism. Postmodernism was just about acceptable because it was safe, locked away in an ivory tower of archness and irony, presenting itself as no more than a playful intellectual exercise. But if you wanted to be serious about it you would find yourself a damn sight more welcome in the genre ghetto. There you could be as weird as you wanted; hell, it was positively encouraged, even more so after the New Wave.

I think maybe we're seeing the end of that backlash, with writers and readers shrugging off contemporary realism's strictures. Maybe it's because all the novels about middle-class mediocrities having mid-life crises put the lie to contemporary realism's claims of relevance, or because the limited scope of that type of work means there's only so many traumas and apotheoses you can represent before the story becomes so familiar as to be banal, or because people started to realise that you could actually have characterisation and a plot. I don't know. Magic Realism in the 80s and 90s may have helped to prove how strange fiction could be just plain better than non-strange. Midnight's Children won the Booker of Bookers, after all. Or it could just be that there's a generation of writers coming to the fore for whom the pulp genres are intrinsic parts of their culture, writers who've grown up on superhero comics, video games, movies like Bladerunner and TV shows like Buffy. Whatever the reason, it really seems that there's a sea change going on.

How this will play out in the field I don't know. I'm a strong advocate of cross-fertilisation, and I think the genre labels are largely empty markers for a big melting pot of strange fiction, a lot of which is anything but generic, so I can't be arsed with territorial yapping about border incursions by those pesky mainstream writers, or about what is or isn't this genre or that. That nonsense just makes me worry that good writers will get so fucked off with it they'll be driven out of the genres and into the mainstream. If the mainstream is opening up to strange fiction why bother dealing with the bullshit of genre dinosaurs who demand that all SF or all Fantasy follow some tired formula?

But the vibrancy of the indie press scene makes me hopeful. I think if the field is as willing to move with the times as that scene indicates, then we might well come out of this with a renewed vigour and a fuckload more respect than we've ever had. Kelly Link was in the Time Magazine Top 5 Books of the Year list just the other year, after all. That's got to be a good sign.

SD: Which one of your characters was the hardest to write about? Why? Have you ever included yourself as a character in your own books? If yes, which one?

HD: I can't say I've really found any of my characters that difficult to write in comparison to the others. Mostly the voice is one of the easiest thing to do and as long as I can figure out where I'm going with the story in terms of structure it's not a problem to keep that going. Getting into the voice, I find, gets me into the point of view which gets me into the world, allows me to visualise the background and action. For all of the characters there have been times when I couldn't get into the voice, sure, but that's largely been because I just wasn't in the right frame of mind at that point of time, or because there was something else wrong with the narrative, structurally or stylistically, that my subconscious was flashing an alert on. So Finnan's story in Vellum was hard to write at points but that was because it needed major splicing and dicing to get it into the right shape.

I suspect this is because the majority of the characters are me, or at least a part of me, in one form or another. There's kind of a Jungian model of the psyche in Vellum and Ink, with Jack as the Id, Thomas as the Self, Reynard as the Persona, Phreedom as the Anima, Joey as the Shadow, Finnan as the Ego and Don as a Mana or Senex figure. They're archetypes, or my personal version of the archetypes, that we all have inside our heads, I think. As such, it's kind of just a matter of accessing that archetype and bringing it out onto the page.

SD: In The Book of All Hours you ignore homosexuality taboos. Furthermore, your descriptions have a level of detail and emotion that the readers of hard fantasy aren't used to. Did you intend it as a message, setting the relationship of two men as a central storyline?

HD: I don't know. "Message" makes it sound all moral and preachy, like I'm out to enlighten the uneducated on the important issue of homosexuality and how homophobia is a bad thing, children, because gays are people too and just as entitled to respect, and religion is not very nice if you use it persecute them, and mores in general, in fact, can be not very nice too, because they can make people feel ashamed and unhappy, even lying to themself about who they are because they can't accept it. All of that could be read into Vellum and Ink, if you wanted, but my own attitude is more like, well, they're queer; deal with it.

I mean, there are pointed comments being made about the queer experience throughout. The use of the Matthew Shepard story in the Faerie chapter is not exactly subtle. It's angry and confrontational: here's your safe and cosy fantasy world with elves and shit; now here's a brutal crucifixion carried out on someone whose only crime was gay sex; this is what we call reality. And then in Ink there's one little thing where I wanted to make a deliberate point, in one of the sex scenes, of having Jack take the passive role, to subvert the stereotyped view which would make him the top and Thomas the bottom. But these points are parts of a larger theme of identity. To a large extent the characters are queer because there's no good reason they shouldn't be. Like there's a shortage of straight central characters?

Actually, if there's a "message" at all maybe it's in that centrality, but it's not so much directed to the general readership as it's aimed at that kid out there, in that nowhere town in that world of shit, who just happens to be gay. I know that when I was that kid I would have loved to see a book with a bona fide homosexual action hero blowing shit up, saving the universe and getting his rocks off with a hot young guy. For me it's worth it if one kid like that actually gets a character they can relate to in a gay who's not a mincing cliché.

SD: The tendency to political correctness has always been an inevitable trend in society. It is especially strong now. How do you think this applies to literature, especially to works as experimental as yours? What do you think its future effects will be on arts in general?

HD: I'm not fond of the term PC because it's an invention of the reactionary right largely designed to dismiss as petty dogmatism what is fundamentally about not being a prick. Not being racist is about not being a prick. Not being sexist is about not being a prick. The same is true when it comes to sexuality, disability and so on. Sure, I think there are idiocies of etiquette where people bend over backward so far in the attempt to not offend anyone that it becomes risible. And sometimes those idiocies are knee-jerk reactions held with utter conviction and a complete lack of reason. These are called mores. Mores are entirely opposed to ethical judgement, they're the fundamental basis of most right wing ideology (if not all there is to it), and sadly, yes, liberal left wingers can have them too.

I don't have any time for mores, whichever direction they come from. On the odd occasion where some moral dictate actually makes sense because its blindingly obvious -- like how its generally considered immoral to kill someone -- it's usually completely contradicted by some other moral dictate -- like how it's generally considered moral to kill someone if they're an enemy soldier. Most of the time mores are so fucked up that those who live their lives by them can simply pick and choose whatever dictate justifies their neurotic/psychotic impulses. Killing is bad? Yeah, but he's a nigger who had sex with a white girl, and that's just plain wrong!

Unfortunately I reckon these idiocies are a part of how humans work. The specifics of the mores come and go, but there's always a mob of cretins and cowards unable or unwilling to make ethical judgements for themselves who therefore have to rely on the received wisdom of rules and regulations about what's right and what's wrong. Thankfully, in my experience, the world of literature has less of them -- I suspect because so much of literature is concerned with ethical complexity. And the more experimental it is, I suspect, the less likely its readership is going to be simplistic enough to judge it on crude mores, PC or otherwise. It's usually only when something is big enough to register on the radar of political and religious organisations that the idiots crawl out of the woodwork to decry the moral transgressor.

I don't see that changing in the future one way or the other.

SD: If that is the case though, what about Richard Morgan's Black Man which was renamed in the US by Del Rei, and never made it to the Hugo or Nebula finals, even though it was labeled one of the best SF books of the year? Or the rumor that some people wanted to change the title of the second Lord of the Rings movie, because The Two Towers wasn't "appropriate" after 9/11?

HD: I can see what you mean, but I think we have to be clear about what we mean by PC here. This is a pejorative term with a specific application, used by the Right to sneer at the practice of avoiding language that might be seen as discriminatory or insulting. It's a term which exists to dismiss a certain reaction to prejudice. So, talking about "African-Americans" rather than "negroes" is about not using the latter term because it's intrinsically associated with slavery, segregation and centuries of racism; but to the Right it's just about "being PC". Talking about "homosexuals" or "gays" rather than "inverts" or "sodomites" is about not using implicitly judgemental terms, but to the Right it's just "PC nonsense". But whenever the Right start banging on about political correctness you can guarantee they'll quickly shift focus to some ridiculously extreme example, like using "vertically challenged" instead of "short". Because this is a strategy designed to trivialise liberal concerns about discrimination. Fuck, I've actually heard an American senator on the radio in the US defending the word "negro" as a "perfectly good word", totally unable to see what was offensive about it, and all the while pronouncing it in his Southern drawl, as "nigruh", so close to "nigger" as being almost indistinguishable. The man was a fucking moron.

Of course, it doesn't cut both ways. If a term is offensive to the Right they would never think of their own objections as being PC; more likely they'd talk about "blasphemy" or "obscenity" or simply "bad taste". And infact, as a writer more likely to run up against that sort of reaction, more likely to offend, and more likely to have editors worried about the reactions of conservative readers, if I was dealing with an editorial pressure to watch my words, to not offend the moral majority, I wouldn't think of that pressure as political correctness. I'd think of it as prudish cowardice.

I mean, that sort of spineless over-cautiousness isn't new and it's not necessarily political at all. With The Two Towers rumour, for example, I don't really see that as a problem with political correctness, because it wasn't anything to do with a liberal worry about the sensitivities of a marginalised minority. That was just idiot producers worried about the cash they might lose out on if a bunch of morons throw a hissy fit about the "bad taste" of the title. What was the worry? That the bereaved of 9/11 would be outraged by a coincidence of two words in combination? That liberals would think it insensitive? Or that conservatives would? I don't think it was even that rational. It was just hysteria that was, quite sensibly, seen for what it was. A moment of panic. And that's assuming the rumour is actually founded.

With Black Man, I haven't read the book, to be honest, but from what I hear of it and what I know of Morgan's work in general, it's the reactionary right he has to worry about, not the so-called "loony left". So I wonder how much of what you talk about is political correctness, and how much is conservatism, and how much just a failure of nerve. If Del Rey thought it might offend African-Americans, yes, that sounds like the sort of over-sensitivity that just feeds the Right wing complaints about PC. And even though Morgan has said he's OK with the change you'll get those who suspect he just doesn't want to piss his publisher off by complaining. I'd take him at his word, though; I suspect it just wasn't that big a deal for him, as long as the text itself wasn't meddled with.

Now, if the lack of Hugo or Nebula nominations for Black Man was due to its confrontational approach to American social inequities that's something else. If that's the case -- and it's a fairly big if -- the problem there is surely more one of conservatism, of readers being uncomfortable with his full-on left wing approach to sexual and racial politics. That wouldn't be entirely surprising in a country where "liberal" is virtually synonymous with "communist infiltrator" for some. And it wouldn't be at all surprising if a publisher were reticent about pushing that sort of book in a market -- the near-future, militaristic technothriller market -- where readers may well be of a more conservative political stripe than the readers of, say, non-linear Cubist fantasies with gay protagonists. But political correctness is not the problem there; if anything, it's the opposite – a reluctance to do anything that the reactionaries might consider objectionable.

And that's an old, old story in literature. The Right has always been vastly more obssesive and oppressive about what writers being "offensive" than any PC left-winger could even hope to emulate.

Go back to The Two Towers, in fact. If political correctness were really an issue I'd have thought someone might have questioned Peter Jackson on those rather dubious representations of Orks with their black skins, broad noses and "tribal" war-paint, taken him aside and said, um, Peter, don't you think these look a bit like those dodgy 19th century representations of African "savages"? Or similarly, with the new King Kong, where the natives of Skull Island are even worse! Fuck, they're a total racist stereotype of the "degenerate negro race", straight out of the 30's pulps. The cannibal natives in the second Pirates of the Carribean movie aren't much better; they're just objects of comedy rather than horror.

I don't see political correctness having much of an effect there.

SD: Your works are stylistically complex. Do you feel that this is your main strength as a writer, and if so, what is your main weakness? You got any? :)

HD: That's something of a loaded question, with style so often seen as being at odds with content. I'd say one of my main strengths is certainly voice, style as content. I can turn a pretty phrase, I reckon, but it's done in the service of narrative voice, an attempt to capture character. Some of my works, like Vellum and Ink, are more noticeably complex simply because you've got multiple points of view and each has its own voice. Different characters need different voices. I don't like to leave a clumsy sentence -- I'll do my best to make sure the rhythm flows, to turn it into something that would sound good if read aloud -- but that doesn't mean the prose has to be flowery. With some characters you might want that voice to be punchy and plain, pared down to the bare bones.

Where it might look more complex, in tBoAH, is because there one of those voices -- one of the most important -- is the voice of the bitmites, which I wanted to be really distinct. You've got a group mind that's part magical and part mechanical, so I wanted it to be really alien, really artificial. And it functions as a Greek Chorus at times, so it has to be pretty damn poetic. It has to read like this is the language itself, the Cant, actually come alive. The result is not exactly going to read like Hemingway. I have a few short stories which use the bitmites too, and the prose is even more dense in them.

Where I see that as a strength, a lot of readers see it as my main weakness, I'm sure. It can come across as excessively symbolic, opaque and obscure. If it doesn't work for a reader, you're fucked. The story totally fails for them. The same is true, actually, with other facets of my writing. I take a really abstract approach to structure a lot of the time, sort of a Cubist thing, with a fragmented narrative, sections arranged according to theme and tone. To me it's all about balance, shape; there's a huge amount of order in there, like in a Cubist painting, if you step back far enough from the canvass to see it properly. But if it doesn't work for you it looks like complete chaos. So again where I see strength, others see weakness.

Or again with character. The 3D model of time I use in tBoAH means you get all these different versions of the same character -- mythic and archetypal, historical and realist. What I'm trying to do is give the real world character all the dimensionality that comes from seeing them in multiple worlds, a hero in one but a villain in another. It's a way of showing the complexity in the permutations. And I want to give them the resonance of myth, but at the same time to give that myth a deep grounding in reality, so you really connect with the character, empathise with them. I'm really proud of Finnan, for example. I felt in Vellum that he really came alive as a character, that the approach really paid off.

But some readers have just been alienated by that approach. If the character exists in multiple realities, they think, their death in one is diminished. Or the archetypal aspect is something they just don't engage with; it looks superficial, a caricature. They look at Jack Flash and think he's just a cartoon, a comic book hero. To me they're missing the point, but it doesn't really matter what I think. As far as that reader is concerned, my characterisation doesn't work.

Ultimately, I guess, it's a disregard for conventionality that's both my main strength and my main weakness. That attitude affects my writing on all levels -- voice, structure, character, plot -- and it's either a strength or a weakness depending on your viewpoint.

SD: Has there been a point when you doubted whether you should continue writing?

HD: No, although there might have been times when others did, for all the reasons outlined above.

Seriously, though, there have been times when I doubted that I could. I felt pretty burnt-out after Ink, and a couple of projects went awry because I just felt like tBoAH had taken so much out of me. I got blocked on one project, and at the lowest point in that sort of situation, after a massive headfuck like tBoAH, you can end up wondering if you've just spent everything you had, if that was it. But really, I knew that was bullshit, that I just needed a break to clear my head, to let the energy build up again and to give my subconscious time to work out what was wrong with this particular project.

Thing is, I've got a ton of notes and ideas for poems, stories, novels, and I know the way I work, that sometimes I just won't be able to get into the zone but sooner or later it'll kick in again. Even when I get blocked on some piece of writing it generally feels like a sort of palpable presence in the back of my head, like a pressure building up. I get cranky, edgy. I'll pace the room like some fucking trapped animal because I know the story is trying to get out. I just have to find the right key to unlock the gate. There's no doubt about whether I should or could keep writing. If anything it's the opposite, this constant frustration that I should be writing now, god damn it. Now, now, NOW!

SD: Do you believe in the idea of the artist as a solitary genius, and do you think there is place for such people nowadays? Do you communicate actively with other colleagues and does that help you?

HD: I'm sure there's a subset of artists who are geniuses, and a subset of those who are solitary, but I don't buy it as some bullshit Romantic myth of the true artist, isolated from the rest of humanity by the uniqueness of their vision. That just sounds like posturing bollocks to me. I'm not sure I even believe in innate talent. Talent is vision, far as I'm concerned, and vision is something you can't learn in the same way you can learn craft, but it's something you can... I don't know... find. It's just a matter, I think, of looking hard enough in the right place, throwing yourself into life -- love and death, sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, whatever really makes you feel enthusiasmos in the old Greek sense of having the divine within. That's what inspiration is, I think. It's nothing to do with being a "genius" with some sort of "gift".

That passionate engagement with the world could make you solitary or social. Sure, there are some artists who throw themselves so deeply into their vision they end up out of touch, but I'm a social being. For me, there's a "blood, sweat and tears" humanism that drives me and that's fed by contact with friends. I can be a bit too much of a party animal for my own good, to be honest. But when I go to cons like WFC in the US or Fantasycon in the UK and spend time boozing and blathering with colleagues I tend to come back hyper-charged, reinvigorated.

And for purely practical reasons, if you're an aspiring writer in the genre community I strongly recommend getting out there, making connections, if not through cons then over the internet, via blogs and forums, because there's a whole community out there that's incredibly supportive and helpful. If you're blatantly out to get something from it, of course, it'll show, so don't treat it as a means to an end. Nobody wants to hear your fifteen minute monologue on the great idea underpinning your first novel which you just happen to have a copy of, it's about this book, see, blah blah blah. But if you get out there and just look at it as a chance to have some fun hanging out with like-minded people, who knows what might come of it?

SD: Have you been strongly influenced by another author? If yes, who?

HD: Too many to count. I get a love of language from Delany, a concern with metaphysics and mindfuckery from Dick. Both of those writers were quite formative influences, I guess. But if you look into tBoAH, I think you can also find the clear influence of James Joyce, Edward Whittemore and Guy Davenport in various places. The idea of the Book itself is half Borges, half Lovecraft. And the list goes on. I don't know if there's an author I could single out as a cardinal influence over anyone else.

The nearest I could come to it, maybe is Moorcock, because although I came to him quite late and didn't really click with the straight Fantasy stuff -- Corum, Hawkwind, etc. -- you can see, I think, the deep influence of both Jerry Cornelius and Oswald Bastable in Jack -- Jack Flash and Jack Carter. With things like the chi-gun, the airships, the alternate realities, the pulp adventures, all of that stuff, I don't think it's hard to see the roots. There are actually a couple of little references in Vellum and Ink, slipped in as deliberate nods to Moorcock, acknowledgements of that debt.

Even some of the other characters are partly an extension of the Eternal Champion idea. I map his Eternal Champion, as a hero archetype, to the Id, and I think you can do something similar with other characters too. So Joey, as the Shadow, is the Eternal Villain, while Thomas, as the Self, is what Jung called the Puer Eternus, the Eternal Kid. And so on. Connecting that cast of characters to the Harlequinade was, in no small part, inspired by Moorcock making a similar connection in his Jerry Cornelius stuff.

Hell, the Vellum is basically my take on Moorcock's multiverse, an attempt to systematise it by looking at it in terms of three dimensions. So yeah, I think it's fair to say that Moorcock was a pretty strong influence.

SD: More and more authors seem to take up blogging, either on the request of their publisher, or because they want to be more accessible to their fans. You have a blog; apart from the obvious advantages, do you feel that it may get in the way of an author's work?

HD: A blog is an author's work. It's writing. It's not fiction and it's not for money, but neither is a journal, or notebooks, or letters, and these are all ways of developing one's craft or one's ideas.

I mean, clearly there's an aspect of self-promotion to blogging, which is why a publisher would be keen on it, and that contact with the fans is part of that. But those blogs that are just about the PR are often pretty dull, like a series of press releases -- this story sold here, that one sold there. Yeah, whatever. If you don't enjoy blogging for the sake of it, it's probably not worth the hassle.

But for me that contact with the reader is as much about the feedback as it is about PR. It's cool to get complete strangers from remote country's taking the time to post a comment saying they've enjoyed this or that entry, and how they found it because they liked your books enough to hunt the blog down. That totally energises you, keeps you feeling that, yes, there's somebody out there appreciating what you do. Writing's not like music, where you get the audience reaction at a gig, the buzz of live performance, actual applause. So a blog is great if you're, like me, a total attention slut.

But more importantly, as far as I'm concerned, a blog can be a place where you formulate theories, tell anecdotes, rant and rave and ramble about whatever is interesting you or pissing you off -- and all of that is good practice. In fact, it can even be a part of the production process, a way to kick story ideas around out loud or work through ideas about your approach to writing and genre and so on. Over the few years I've been blogging I've built up more than enough material for a book of non-fiction, and I'm now seriously looking at the possibility of working that material up into something publishable. Without the blog as a place to riff on the nature of strange fiction I doubt I would ever have gone in that direction. If it comes together the blog will basically be the notebooks from which the first rough draft is worked up.

SD: What do you think of writing workshops?

HD: The Glasgow SF Writers Circle was utterly invaluable to me. I honestly don't think I'd be where I am today without it. There are some caveats, of course, but I think if you want to learn your craft properly a good workshop is a great asset. But here's the caveats:

You can't teach vision, I think. You can learn all the essentials of craft through critique, how to analyse a work on the level of character, action, setting and so on, all the ins and outs of language, how to cut back on adjectives and adverbs, good grammar, bad grammar and creative grammar. You can learn how to turn leaden prose into gold. But if there's a lack of vision, the story will still just be mediocre. That's one big problem, I think, with the whole workshop approach, if writers think they can just go through this process, "graduate" from it, and that's that. The GSFWC, Milford, Clarion, an MFA course -- as valuable as these might be there's a limit to what they can teach you.

The second caveat is that it only works with a good workshop, and by "good" I mean brutal. A lot of workshops are basically cosy knitting circles, mutual masturbation societies where hobbyists get together, read each other's stories (sometimes aloud, for fuck's sake) and then slap each other on the back about how much they all enjoy each other's work. Fuck that shit. If you want support, you go to the pub afterward, hang out in your free time. Then you can stroke each other's egos all you want. The workshop is not for that. The workshop is for tearing your crappy story apart and shoving the useless scraps of it in your face so you can smell the shit. This doesn't work. That doesn't work. Your story falls apart because of A, B, C, D, E and so on. Some workshoppers will always cushion the blow, temper the criticism with praise. Others will always try to be constructive, offer a solution to the problem. But if the story isn't salvageable, you may have to face a workshopper who's ready to say that to your face. And in a workshop run right you might just have to shut up and wait till it's time for your rebuttal before you can say a damn thing.

The GSFWC works that way, applying the Milford Rules, where everyone gets a copy of the story beforehand so they have enough time to read it and prepare notes. Then you sit around and everyone gives their critique, one by one, with the writer only allowed to answer direct questions until the very end when they have a chance to respond. This is a good way of not getting sidetracked by the writer jumping in to defend every point, large or small. It works. But here's where the last caveat comes in.

Most people can't take criticism. In all likelihood, people will tell you exactly what's wrong with your story and you won't really listen to a word they say. You'll be too busy being hurt and shocked at how they hated your gem of a story to actually take it in. But what will happen is you'll try harder next time, to prove you can do it, and because you're doing the same thing to their stories you'll be learning all these skills of analysis that you can apply to your own work in order to pull that off. Eventually you will be able to look back at those early works with a critical eye, and you'll realise they were right when they tore it to shreds.

If you really want to learn your craft, I think, you have to learn to be a ruthless critic of your own work and that's where a workshop can be a great tool.

SD: What are your future creative plans? Do you intend to return to the world of the Vellum, or do you have other ideas to put on paper?

HD: As I say, I'm looking at the possibility of a non-fiction book, a book of critique, but the current thing on the agenda is a novella I'm doing for Monkeybrain Books called Escape From Hell! It's a high-octane adventure story -- a hitman, a hooker, a hobo and a hobo in the ultimate prison break... escape from Hell itself. I think a lot of readers of tBoAH will be surprised because this is really action-oriented, fast-paced and short, about 40,000 words. It's about as far from tBoAH as its possible to get, in some respects. I like the idea of going from something insanely huge and sprawling to something really tight, with a completely linear narrative.

After that, the next full novel is a retelling of Gilgamesh, done similarly to the Inanna/Phreedom section in Vellum, with the original source text rewritten and turned into a narrative thread, interwoven with two other threads that'll sort of tell the same story in parallel -- with one set in historical British Columbia and the other set in the near-future. You might well look at it as being set in the Vellum, with action taking place similarly across that 3D time-space, but it's not an unkin story; the characters in the historical and near-future threads will be all too human.

I've got a few ideas that are like that. Basically any story you can tell could be set in the Vellum, whether or not the characters know that. The Book of All Hours series is finished with Ink though. There are four stories already written that are related to it, with the bitmites in this city at the end of time, but otherwise I've no intention of returning to that aspect of the mythos. I'm not interested in retreading the same ground, writing some never-ending series of The Chronicles of the Second Edition of the Book of All Hours, Volume 12. But I do like the possibilities opened up by the whole 3D time idea, so you might well find that idea popping up in my fiction again here and there.

And Jack and Puck have a tendency to infiltrate any story idea that comes to me if I'm not careful. There's a lot of fun to be had with them, and with certain types of story they're too perfectly fitted not to use. So I'm pretty sure they'll be working their way into my fiction for some time to come.

SD: Could you share an advice you think important for aspiring authors (apart from "work hard and don't give up")?

HD: Let's see. I can probably boil down everything I've said above into something simpler. Write for you and those like you, what you would like to read. Write for the person you want to inspire the way you were inspired. Write the book into the shape it wants to be. Don't be afraid to rip things apart and put them back together. If you can get into a character's voice, you can get into their world. Fuck mores and fuck conventions. Fuck genre labels. Forget bullshit cliché of the solitary genius. Get out and meet other writers and it'll do you the world of good. If you want to find your vision you've got to throw yourself into life anyway. And if you want to learn your craft, the best thing a workshop will teach you is how to be ruthless.

As an illustration rather than advice, back when I was starting out I got totally bogged down in all this stuff I'd built up over years. Half-finished stories, notes, background material, bits and bobs of writing that didn't come to anything because every time I sat down to try and work it into a story I tried to use it all. I didn't know how to throw anything away. This sentence was really cool. That image was great. This idea just had to be used. That character just couldn't be scrapped. I couldn't go forward as a writer because I couldn't let go of anything. So one day I took it all out and burned every single scrap of it, everything I'd written up to that point, the good with the bad. It was a crazy thing to do, and there's stuff I regret losing, but it had to be done and it couldn't be done by halves. It was a mercy killing. If you're an aspiring author, I reckon, someday you'll face a point in your writing where you'll have to exercise that sort of ruthlessness. If you can burn everything to ash and start again with a blank page then, if nothing else, you'll know you've got what it takes. Because I think that's the point where you realise you've found your vision, and that all that stuff had to be cleared away because it wasn't a part of it.

SD: Do you wish to share something with your Bulgarian readers?

HD: A few beers? I'm a sociable person. If you ever fancy a chat at a con, I'm always happy to share a pint or two and a good conversation.

Stations of the Tide - Untranslated (SD #53)

2008-03-21T22:39:00.000+02:00

Stations of the Tide (Michael Swanwick)
Author: Roland

The Distant Future. Mankind has colonized the galaxy, and life among the stars can be just as strange and mystical as it is common and mundane. А bureaucrat is sent on the planet Miranda, where in mere days the Jubilee Tides of the powerful Ocean are going to swallow most of the Continent, as they do every two hundred years. But in the chaos of evacuation Gregorian the mage, educated on the orbital cities, has taken a forbidden technology to the surface and plans to reshape the planet according to his dark vision. And he must be caught before the Tides.

Stations of the Tide brims with ideas, which have probably provided solid inspiration for David Brin’s Kiln People and Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky – virtual realities on the scale of Zelazny’s Donnerjack, forbidden supertechnologies, AIs and space cities…

…all of them simply a backdrop. Stations of the Tide is much more a work of poetry than a story. I don’t mean poems, but the whole feel of the novel. With complete mastery, Michael Swanwick creates a universe of forbidden advanced technologies, of shamanism and mysticism holding hands with modern thought, of an indigenous race supposedly gone forever, that now returns. It is a universe of greatness now past, one of subtle elegance, tantric sex and decadent pageants, where most things are not only unexplained, but also unexplicable.

Positives:
+ Тhe novel’s incredible atmosphere. It carries something of Zelazny at his best and yet does not seem derivative.
+ The vivid and memorable characters, again so much like Zelazny’s – not realistically, but romantically drawn, many (all???) of them larger than life.
+ The story is not especially involved, but it is full of mysteries and draws you in irresistably.
+ The book is full of stories-within-the-story that constantly enrich the setting.

Negatives:
– At the same time all these tales make you feel as if you’re holding a thematic collection of short stories rather than a novel. Practically every chapter contains a tale that yet again directs the reader away from the main plotline. It’s on purpose, of course, but a bit irritating nevertheless.
– The plotline itself isn’t especially brilliant. A quibble, given the novel’s atmospheric bias, but it might grate on the story-geeks.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Stations of the Tide has won the Nebula – the more high-brow of the two Big Ones. It is as much a philosophical book as it is a work of science fiction, even if the philosophy is not quite of the concrete, intellectual kind. One thing is certain – you are obliged to read it.

9.5/10

Translation: Trip

Ursula Le Guin - Profiles (SD #15)

2008-03-19T17:04:00.000+02:00

Ursula Le Guin (1929 -)
Author: Demandred

The time has finally come for us to pay due respect to the mistress of fantasy and science fiction, after a long period of unseemly neglect. Very few are the writers who can rise up to her achievement in defining and developing the science fiction genre. But, first things first…

The events of her life are rather unremarkable - she wasn't in Vietnam, she didn’t engage in bizarre occupations before she built up her reputation as a writer. Ursula Le Guin was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California, the daughter of renowned anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, which in a way accounts for the method she employs in many of her works and her special interest in subjects related to anthropology, which are among the predominant themes in her fiction. Her mother was an anthropologist herself, as well as a writer. Le Guin received a Bachelor’s Degree in literature from the Radcliffe College in 1951 and a Master’s Degree from Columbia University in 1952. A year later she married the historian Charles Le Guin, whom she met while studying in Paris. The two of them have lived in Portland, Oregon since 1958, avoiding public appearances.

The first short story that Le Guin submits to a science fiction magazine, is rejected, which is hardly a surprise, she being eleven at the time. Her first successfully published short story was called April in Paris in the Amazing Stories magazine. Her first published novel was Rocannon’s World, released in 1966.

Her most popular works (in fact taking up the larger part of her creative output) are the fantasy series taking place in the realm of Earthsea, as well as the novels of the Ekumen Cycle. In the case, though, the definitions "SF" and "Fantasy" are rather relative - neither is Earthsea a classic fantasy, nor is the Ekumen Cycle pure SF. The Earthsea series of novels is somewhat unique in the field of fantasy fiction - the plot, the setting, or the outcome of the "Good vs Evil" struggle are not as important. It is not the standard yarn to kill some time, a book that you will forget in a month’s time. The deeper message that Le Guin has infused in the series has the quality of connecting with the more sensitive readers and leaving them with ample food for thought afterwards. Balance, the choices we are obliged to make, whether the end we tend to justifies our means, the power of things’ true names, etc.

Le Guin’s other significant cycle concerns itself mostly with the issues that arise from the clash of different cultures, the development of the political and social models under diverse conditions and preconditions. Her knowledge of anthropology shines through in these books, the various societies invented by her and populating distant planets look incredibly realistic and are meticulously and systematically described. The events take place in the distant future, where a large number of planets are inhabited by descendants of human beings, who are almost like us, or only slightly deviating from our understanding of humanity (the asexual people from The Left Hand of Darkness). The main themes here are similar to those of the Earthsea series, with the addition of a larger dose of social-political ideas and issues. The most famous among them are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, both winners of Hugo and Nebula. The former is a stunning and penetrating study of a society without any gender distinctions, and the latter - an original take on the issue of whether it is possible for an anarchistic community, which has abandoned all claims to government and private property, to exist.

Both books fully deserve the acclaim they've received and are still considered some of the greatest classics in the science fiction genre (although their subject matter subordinates the SF elements to matters of greater anthropological and sociological import). As a whole, the Ekumen Cycle is a far cry from the so-called hard science fiction, which is mainly concerned with the implementation of new technologies in the future, and bearing the mark of scientific argumentation and prognostics. There are no strange and evil aliens there either, nor are there any cutting-edge technical gadgets or majestic spaceships. Le Guin uses the premise of a human civilization, advanced enough to be able to spread on a number of foreign planets and diversify, culturally and socially, to illustrate her ideas about the juxtaposition of humanity and nature.

Apart from her most famous creations, Le Guin has written a large number of other books, most popular among which is The Lathe of Heaven. This is the story of a man, whose dreams can affect and alter reality. The man is manipulated by a psychiatrist, striving to create an utopical society. This is, to me, Le Guin’s best book - only 170 pages long, it contains a rich fare of great ideas, characters and atmosphere, as well as a good number of rewarding plot twists. Le Guin has also published many short stories, and it is unfortunate that only a fraction of those have been released in Bulgaria. She has not constrained herself merely to writing fantastic fiction, but has written also poetry, children’s books, mainstream fiction, etc.

Another thing that is deserving of mention is that, for more than 40 years now, Ursula Le Guin has been working on her translation (or interpretation, rather, since a translation faithful to the original is impossible) of the ancient Chinese thinker Lao-Tzu’s classical philosophical treatise Tao Te Ching, the principal foundation of Taoism (known among us Bulgarians as Daoism). The concepts associated with understanding and interpretation of Taoism by Le Guin, are instrumental in her fiction, this being especially apparent in The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea series.

Here I will enumerate some of the most important distinctive features of Le Guin’s works:

- Ideas, both original and gripping, often hiding beneath the sometimes simple plot. The fact that I have thought through each of her books for at least a week after finishing it, and often even after that, speaks volumes in itself. The ideas in her books never intrude upon the reader, and many of her works possess a delightful ambivalence of meaning.

- Incredible style of writing - Very few writers nowadays can equal Le Guin’s voice in telling a story and her skill with words. The way she writes is clear, poetic and moving at once. A pleasant respite from the mire of mediocrity and downright incompetence that has been flooding speculative fiction lately.

- The presence of real, complete characters - all behaving as a normal human being should, with all the good sides, as well as the bad. No invincible superhumans or inadequate puppets.

- The pervasive atmosphere - in almost all of her works the atmosphere is gloomy, oppressive, dark even, but also inexplicably and poetically beautiful. One can easily plunge into the vast seas of Earthsea or travel across the boundless glaciers of Gethen. Her books, contrary to genre cliches, seem to open out after they end, instead of rounding up.

- Maybe the chief element in almost all of Le Guin’s fiction - the unraveling of the plot is, to a great extent, a façade under which the true essence and intention of the book are concealed. That is why it often lacks excitement and surprise. If you are of the people that judge what they read by the pace of plot and action, you are almost certain to be disappointed.

But if you want something more out of your reading experience than mere entertainment, something that will make you think, and to relive the story alongside the characters, then Le Guin is the one you need.

(A complete list of Ursula Le Guin's works follows in the original article)

Translation: Trip

Grave of the Fireflies - Anime (SD #36)

2008-03-19T16:06:00.000+02:00

Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
Author: Roland

September 21, 1945... that was the night I died

I’m not at all convinced that I can write an adequate review about this

film. It just… saddened me. I’ve wept before while watching films, but this time the tears just flowed. I have never been so upset. The film touched me very deeply and painfully, but apart from that, I’m not sure if it managed to convey anything else. Maybe it didn’t try hard enough, or I wasn’t sensitive enough to feel it. One way or another, it doesn’t matter…

Grave of the Fireflies is a drama - of everything that I’ve watched thus far, I think this is the film that, to my mind, best fits the definition. Its message is nothing special, likewise its plot. It begins by showing us the lowest end of one long and fatal spiral towards the very bottom of existence, and then works its way up to show us how it has come to that. And it does that through the cruelest means possible – by showing us the destruction of something innocent and helpless. The whole film becomes clear to the viewer in the first three minutes but this too doesn’t matter.

The story starts unfolding sometime at the end of the Second World War, and it’s based on the autobiographical novel Hotari no haka (Grave of the Fireflies) by Akyuki Nosaka. The author himself describes the book as an attempt to reconcile himself with his feeling of guilt. In the coastal town of Cobe a boy named Seita (the alter-ego of Nosaka in the book) and his little sister Setsuko lose their mother in one of the ceaseless American bombardments, which also leaves them without a home. At first they live with an aunt of theirs, but as their mutual relationship becomes more and more strained, Seita decides they should take care of themselves without any help from others.

The big brother does everything in his power to save Setsuko from hunger, but in the turmoil of war, under the constant threat of bombardments, without a job and a way to earn their bread, misery grips the two children by the throat. And as the little girl, so full of life, starts to wane and waste away, the love and the wholehearted devotion the two nourish for each other, and their desire to find happiness in spite of all the vicissitudes of fate, transform the movie into an immensely heavy and difficult emotional experience. Because powerless love and doomed happiness hurt.

The truth is that I am not certain if Grave of the Fireflies, in itself, is a truly powerful and touching movie, but since I have a little sister myself, it was impossible not to take it somewhat more personal. The whole tragedy of life falling apart, the inability to find a way out of the maelstrom…The lack of willpower, perhaps, or maybe just the helplessness and simplicity of the child - Seita himself is not capable of taking care of himself and Setsuko, despite his desire to be the shoulder for her to lean on. The film creates the sensation of desperation and misery in a way that is incredibly real. Maybe the drama is in excess sometimes, maybe it isn’t - what matters is that one can really feel it. This is not the tragedy of the world, of humanity, not even of love. There is no heroic sacrifice (although what Seita is trying to do for his sister, is probably immeasurably more heroic than a thousand space rangers blowing themselves up in an embrace with a deadly alien), there is not even an enemy. Actually, no, that’s not true. There is an Enemy, the most terrifying and relentless of them all - reality.

This is the impression that Grave of the Fireflies creates, without trying to lay any serious stress on it. Reality marches on, inexorable, trampling upon the weak, deservedly or not, it does not matter. Faces turn away and refuse to give up their sustenance, even for money. Others feel nothing for the little barefoot girl, even as death peers from inside uncomprehending eyes. Or maybe that’s the reason for their callous looks. But it is here that we’re struck by the greatest horror - the film does not judge these people, and it takes away from us the possibility of doing it ourselves. These people… we can understand them. They, too, are the victims of that same reality, bowing, bending, breaking under Fate’s blows. And that they refuse to reach out to the ones who are even more miserable than they, does not make them bad, or evil, or even weak. It makes them human. And, watching this, all we can do is to clench fists in grief and feeble outrage. Because, in its essence, Grave of the Fireflies is one slow, but unwavering and certain road to perdition.

The film takes a rather aggressive stance at the viewers, and touches them in the simplest, oldest and surest way - by showing them a child’s suffering. This is something that, under normal circumstances, irritates me, because it is a cheap and easy way of ensuring the viewer’s emotional involvement - almost as epidermally superficial as tickling people in order to get them to laugh. But, for some reason, Grave of the Fireflies did not irritate me at all, what with all its coarse manipulative methods, that I did not fail to notice throughout the whole movie. It is just that it is not meant to manipulate, it is not sweetened or smoothened in any way in the sorrow it expresses. It makes no attempt whatsoever to make us like it by making us cry. It is indeed so subdued in its sadness that one has the feeling that the director himself (Isao Takahata, a long-standing colleague of Hayao Miazaki) was suffering, while making the film. And he doesn’t impose that nagging feeling of a dilettant, trying to serve the viewer cheap drama, achieved through amateurish methods. Rather, he seems to be a man that wants us to live through a heart-rending tragedy with him. The wonderful music contributes to the whole experience, every theme fitting perfectly the viewer’s emotional state in every given moment of the film.

The animation is incredibly realistic and devoid of any excessive shapes or colours in that respect. Along with the other elements, it builds a story that is real. Not only through all of this does the film appear entirely truthful to us, but through the little details as well. Gestures, words, grimaces… The character of Setsuko is perfection incarnate, and this is not an overstatement. She is a four-year-old girl of flesh and blood (even the girl who gave her voice to Setsuko - Ayano Shiraishi - was at that time (1988) only five years old). Every word of hers, every gesture, reaction, are something I have seen in reality, and something I have had to deal with. I have never before, in an animated movie, seen such a brilliant rendering of the character of a little child. Honestly. Seita, although a bit more ordinary, is nonetheless just as real and alive, and his struggles, fuelled by desperation, arouse not only pity, but also genuine sympathy. Because we know that not only we wouldn't have been different in such circumstances, but we would have probably done much worse. Which only serves to heighten the pathos of the film.

And at the end… the light of the fireflies flickers and dies, and so do they. Fleeting and feeble, a starlet that burns out to oblivion, leaving trace nowhere but in the heart of innocence, itself a small, evanescent thing. A light that, glowing, has unveiled nothing but its own woeful existence. And the small, nameless grave of the firefly, that no one will ever come to.

Because a firefly means nothing to the world…

Translation: Trip

Tigana - Untranslated (SD #23)

2008-03-19T12:50:00.000+02:00

Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
Author: Matrim

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the authors that stand out in the mass of fantasy writers. His unique style, rich and poetic, lends his books the quality of majestic, yet tenderly-lyrical poems. What with all that, I honestly admit that I didn’t much enjoy the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, I didn’t even get round to finishing the third book. I am, however, ready to argue with anyone that The Lions of Al-Rassan is a magnificent book, a true chef d'oeuvre. Because of these conflicting passions, I was quite uncertain as to what to expect from Tigana when I took it up.

The Story: The Peninsula of the Palm (so called because of its geographical shape), divided into small feudal provinces, is under the reign of two warring magician sovereigns. One of them, Brandin, in his desire to avenge his son’s death, magically erases the name and memory of the most beautiful of the nine provinces - Tigana. Most of its inhabitants emigrate into other parts of the peninsula due to the terrible oppression, exercised in their home land. Liberation and restoring the memory of Tigana seems impossible, but is it really so?

Positive: As I have already mentioned, Kay’s specific style makes the reading of each one of his books a true pleasure. What is more important, however, is that he employs his mastery of the language to convey the emotions of the characters in a brilliant way. Sorrow, joy, melancholy - the whole kaleidoscope of human emotions is not only shown, but also passed on to the reader. In other words, Martin can kill off a hundred of his characters, and I wouldn’t care, while the description of Tigana alone touched me, and I have no reasons for nostalgia. The experience the book offers cannot be put into words, it has to be, well, experienced, and it is this beauty that is the novel’s greatest asset.

Speaking of characters, a fact that deserves mention is that they are finely delineated, each and every one having their strong and weak sides, and they rise much higher than the level of The Average Fantasy Character™. There is a slight element of idealization present, but it is in keeping with the poetical qualities of the novel and it didn’t bother me at all. To some extent, the lack of "screen time" for each of the characters to become fully developed may be seen as a problem, but on the other hand, we don’t want a book that could barely be contained in ten Tomes, do we (now that’s not the kind of comment I would have expected from a devout fan of Jordan and Erikson – note: inner voice)? Moreover, Kay manages, in a few pages, to make a character more sympathetic, than Jordan can in 10 books.

The setting is not especially original- it is reminiscent of Renaissance Italy in its heyday with the Arts flourishing, the small city-states battling with each other, etc., although less so than the world of the The Lions…, which reminded one too much of Spain. At least here the events do not have their historical equivalents in the real world, which contributes to the suspense. The book looks more like an alternative history than a typical fantasy novel - no other sentient beings except humans, magic is almost none-existent, etc. It’s good that Kay has put effort into detailing the various peoples and customs in the different provinces, without putting them too much to fore, and thus neglecting the plot.

The plot itself, I should say, is not one of Tigana’s strong features. I like intrigues and conspiracies, but their quantity here is disproportionately large, compared to the other elements. Nevertheless, they are pleasingly above the average in quality. The rebel group’s struggle for Liberation is presented in a rather interesting way, and mostly, their doubts as to whether the great end they aspire to justifies their means. The conflict – although at first glance offering us another take on the "Good vs Evil" theme – turns out to be quite complex and multi-layered. The events remain unpredictable in their unfolding right until the very end and the story takes more than one surprising turn. The aforementioned struggle is not only about freedom, but also for the restoration of the memory of beautiful Tigana.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Kay is comfortable with describing sex-scenes, and he does it very well - without the coarse descriptions in Martin, or the laughable results produced by Jordan’s efforts.

Negative: The plot’s unraveling is somewhat too slow and, as a whole, the book could do better with 50-100 pages less. I have nothing against retrospections, but Kay gets a little carried away. Battles, which are usually one of the best characteristics of his books, are this time sub-standard.

Brandin’s character is rather unrealistic - the evil Tyrant, who’s ready to live his whole life expatriated, to erase the memory of Tigana, he subjects its population to genocide, yet in all else he reveals himself as a wonderful personality and a wise ruler. I have nothing against contradictions in one’s character, but here this "split personality" is wholly inexplicable.

The Deus ex machina assists the "good guys" all too often, and this is somewhat irritating. Not that it is not a standard practice in the genre, but I think I have to mention it.

The Epilogue is too short, and much remains unexplained.

Conclusion: Tigana is far from the perfect book, but I just cannot criticize it without forcing myself. The way Kay works with descriptions - the Dawn over the blue sea, the funeral dirges, the towers of Tigana - is so poetic, so beautiful and pure, that any shortcomings recede far in the background to make space for the storm of emotion. If you are carried off by the eloquence of Guy Gavriel Kay, you will stop noticing the negative aspects of the novel, the way a lover overlooks all bad qualities of his beloved.

And the people who’ve enjoyed The Lions of Al-Rassan will probably love Tigana.

Rating: 8.5/10

Translation: Trip

Because, Mr. Anderson, without Purpose we would not exist...

2008-03-18T16:24:00.000+02:00

It is in the nature of every living thing to try and evolve. And ShadowDance is as much a living thing as any member of its team. Seven and a half years ago, when the magazine was first created, its purpose was simple - to review whatever the SD authors felt like writing about. As time passed and the team grew, we defined a new agenda - to be always up to date and to cover everything in the SFF field as far as Bulgaria is concerned.

Yet, as is often the case, people grow up and their interests change. And by this I don't mean we've stopped caring about the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. Exactly the opposite. Only we came to realize how utterly wrong the way books are published in BG is. We're a small country and as such, we don't have publishing houses comparable with those in America or the UK. What's worse, things always seem to get done the opposite of right here.

Whatever the reasons, Bulgarians are denied not only 8/10 of the best books currently published in the West, but also more than half of the great SFF classics. There are amazing authors that are practically unknown here, either because they've been published at the wrong time, with the wrong title or with an awful translation, or simply because they haven't been published at all.

So we defined a new Purpose, one deserving of a capital letter. We decided to promote the Happening World to Bulgarian audience. These days our Profile section is almost exclusively dedicated to unknown or less known authors. We have an Untranslated section where we review either new or older books that haven't yet been published in BG. Also, our Evergreen section has been redirected into reviewing world-renouned classics that - even though they've been around in our country - have never recieved the attention they deserve.

Well, that's us in a nutshell. Pretentious buggers one and all, but buggers with an ideal. We want publishers to know what we think, because - impertinent as it sounds - it's what the intelligent reader thinks. And guess what - some people have finally started listening...

The Team

2008-03-18T15:12:00.000+02:00

Yan Silversword - Yan is the creator of ShadowDance, his father, so to speak. And like many fathers, he did it because he was bored, but we're not gonna let such things ruin the family. What does he do beside being a symbol: Book, Movie and Music reviews, Editorials and News.

Moridin - A programmer with a poet's heart and a scholar's attitude, Moridin was the second to join the ranks of ShadowDance, almost from the very beginning. Now he's dealing with being an editor, author (mostly Book and Movie reviews, Evergreen and Articles), and also being our top man where all things technical are concerned.

Roland - Yours truly came on board around a year after the Beginning. Being an active bugger though, I quickly started taking more work than I could possibly bear, so sometimes I need to... shrug. What I do in the magazine is simple - everything up to editing. There isn't a section of ShadowDance where I haven't left my mark, but that sounds a bit Chihuaua as it goes, so I'm gonna shut up now...

Xellos - One of the oldest (pun intended) members of the magazine, Xellos is our leading designer, webmaster and sometimes - if the planets align just right - author, mainly in the Movies section. He's a fine example of the axiom that placid surface often hides monsters. With tentacles. Oozing tentacles. You know what I mean. But we love him anyway, and sometimes we even think it's reciprocated so I guess it's ok.

Clio - The third in our cute triumvirate of editors, Clio is a charming young lady with a loveable personality and a Nazi obsession with punctuation and spelling. Nothing escapes her notice, which is nice, when you think about it, since both me and Moridin are prone to overlooking things that we're too lazy to fix... Oh, did I mention she used to write reviews too? And even a short story once. Ah, the good old free days...

Alanna - Just another name in the long list of Wheel of Time nicks in Shadowdance but by far the prettiest among them. Alanna is an artist with a personality to match - fickle and witty, both gentle and harsh, and of course - extremely temperamental. She's our designer and even if we've yet to make her write something in the magazine itself, she's still an irreplaceable part of the team.

Matrim & Demandred - It's not easy being an ex-WoT addict, what with all those Moridins, Asmodeans and Rands walking around, but Mat & Dem manage it just fine. Almost identical twins, they've been a part of the magazine since time immemorial, and they've always been among the most active authors in the team in every area, be it Books, Movies, Evergreen or Profiles. And they're actually quite different from one another, but we can't really pass the opportunity to present a pair of twins as... erm... a pair. Can we?

Random - The second youngest member of the Shadowdance team. Previously of the programmer persuasion, but now - thankfully - an honest student of English Language and Literature. Random is as stable and dedicated to the cause as one can get, without being a nerd, and he has extremely broad interests when it comes to literature. And that's a field where, as we know, the urge to experiment can never be a bad thing. Also, Random is one of the last ShadowDancers who can still find the time to write short stories.

Trip - Another student (now almost graduate) of English Language and Literature, Trip is among the newer members of the team, but very valuable none the less. He's a paradox - both very productive and always being late with his texts - but he's so cute and universally liked by almost every living creature in existence, that we can hardly hold it against him, even if we wanted to.

The Dragon - Another programmer (God they're everywhere!), but one who actually reads fiction instead of only code, which kinda makes him uniqe, doesn't it? He's been with Shadowdance for years and in that time he's written a really appalling quantity of Book, Movie and Games reviews. By far the fastest reader I know, and one of the most active members of the team.

Morwen - Our own personal Jane Austeen has all it takes to be unique-but-still-cute in the XXI century. She's always fighting for what's Appropriate And Decent, yet never shies from listening some depressing music in the small hours, or asserting some good biting sarcasm. Morwen mainly reviews Movies, but like any old member of the team she's been there and done most of that.

Alexis - Alexis is a Medicine student. She's also our resident yaoi fan-girl. Or she was. Or she still is, but not quite. It's not perfectly clear. You don't really know what yaoi is? Well so much the better for you, although Alexis would be the first to explain it in detail if you make the mistake of stating your ignorance in front of her. Alex is also an anime-geek and has written many reviews in the Anime section. She also reviews Movies and Books. And in her spare time she writes slash fiction. For what it's worth, she's damn good in it.

Ghibli - A quiet personality can often hide treacherous waters, and just like Xellos, Ghibli isn't as calm as she looks. One of the last Tolkienists alive in the team, she often has fits of Righteous Anger concerning our rather lax ways of doing things in ShadowDance. But don't let that fool you. Ghibli has a big heart and is always there when you need her. She's also Yan's girlfriend, so that practically makes her Mrs. ShadowDance when you come to think about it...

Marfa - As strange birds go, Marfa is pretty strange. She's one of those people who live in a parallel universe where things are almost the way they're in ours, but not quite. That gives her a unique perspective on things, one that is invaluable at times, even though she's never been among the most active members of the magazine. Still, we're all family, and Marfa is as much a part of it as anyone else.

Garo - Garo is the current force behind the Music section. He's also good with Movies, but his true passion is music (or at least parts of it, ones I don't really understand) and in the few months he's been in the team, he's already made a name for himself. Which is "Garo". Not extremely original, I grant you, but if it's ok with him...

Amelia - Another anime-geek and the paragon of criticism and irony, Amelia is a girl with attitude. One should be very careful to be on her good side or consequences might occur. When there's a will there's a way, and Amelia never lacks the will. She's been in the magazine for a few months now and she shines in the Anime and Movies sections.

Dangerous Pumpkin - Almost as mysterious as her nickname, this charming young woman is our secret agent among the Enemy (a.k.a. the publishing houses). She is witty, smart and critical, and she rarely has the patience for bad literature or misbehaving publishers. Which means she's in for an awful amount of never-ending suffering, but she's bearing it like a trooper. And we love her for it.

Pugsley - The youngest and newest member of the team, Pugsley is into Movies and Anime. He's a party animal and his skills in improvisation when it comes to cursing and vulgarity are beyond human. Beneath this rather rough visage however he is a very intelligent young man and a loyal friend. Yes, the combination is as good as it sounds.

---------------------
In those long almost eight years many other people have been around and left, or just guest-appeared for a specific Review/Article. Our team is dynamic and we never turn down people who want to write and have the ability. That's the only way to stay alive after all...

On introductions, translations, meaning and the lack thereof...

2008-03-18T14:26:00.000+02:00

Ok, so this is my attempt at hustling a BG fanzine to an English-speaking audience. Namely - the on-line magazine ShadowDance. This blog will present selected stuff (reviews, articles and the like), translated in English. Is there a point to it? No, not really. Even if you like what you read here, you're still not gonna be able to read the magazine. But hey! Why should such banality stand in the way of Pointless Undertakings?

So, anyway, my name is Simeon, but I use Roland on-line, and NO - that's not some obscure call for help, but a remnant of a different Age, long ago, when true men roamed the wastelands, women were to die for, and little yours truly was a die-hard fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. What I do in ShadowDance is mostly everything - from organization to writing reviews and editing. I'm not alone in this, of course, as you'll have the chance to see if you check the Team page. Shadowdance is entirely fan-based and therefore - still alive, kicking and keeping with the proud traditions of unprofessionality set by thousands of net-junkies through the ages.

Even so, we've been on for more than seven years now, and that's not a small feat, all things considered. Furthermore we've established ourselves as the leader in SFF on-line community in Bulgaria. Which is less of an accomplishment than it sounds, but nice and fluffy all the same.

So, without further ado...