GalleyCat had an item about William Gibson that includes a video of an interview. Gibson, credited by many with inventing cyberpunk, says that he thinks all science fiction stories are really about the here and now—or at least their authors' here and now. That makes Neuromancer "about" the 80's. Gibson credits September 11 with pushing away from writing science fiction but it seems to me that he was moving in that direction all by himself before that.

I think there's something in the idea that all fiction is of its time, not so much because writers can imagine anything other than their own time, but because readers can't relate to anything that is so strange that it simply won't fit into their frame of reference. Science fiction readers have a much bigger frame than most folks, but they still have one.

A recent article on The Guardian titled "Chick lit author on Dream Street with literary prize" describes the Melissa Nathan Award for comedy romance, which was recently won by novelist Lisa Jewell for her book 31 Dream Street. To quote the article, "The book tells the story of the burgeoning love between a misfit, failed poet and his neighbour, who has for years been watching him and his string of unusual tenants from her house across the street."

The article quotes Jewell as saying, "The award is definitely something the genre needs, and more importantly is something the reader needs. People say 'chick lit' and what they mean is 'crap'."

I'm sure most spec fic writers could empathize. And unlike the Hugo, which is nice but comes with just a statue, this award comes with £5,000 (about $10,000 USD, these days). Not that I'm sneering at the Hugo, but extra bucks to go along with the honor never hurts.

I was watching some of the extra stuff that comes on the DVD for the Golden Compass, (a movie I enjoyed a lot) and I heard Phillip Pullman say that as he was working on the story, at one point he realized that because it was a fantasy he could do anything he wanted to do.

I could identify! I find fantasy a very liberating genre to work in, even more than science fiction. I also thought it was interesting that Pullman wrote not just YA but actually children's books. There was a tremendous fuss in the UK when The Amber Spyglass became the first children's book to win the Whitbread Prize. It also won the Whitbread for best Children's Book that year, so it's not like they were saying it wasn't a children's book.

One of the new forums on the PPW website had a notice that someone has started a small press that specializes in "Christian fantasy and science fiction." Now there's a niche market for you! There are people who would consider that genre an oxymoron. On the other side of the fences are the folks who would call it redundant. To each his own, I say.

The company is called Marcher Lord Press and their guidelines for writers explain their requirements. A book has to have a Christian worldview before they'll be interested in it, and (more surprisingly) they aren't looking for YA.

They also have a very different business model from a large publisher:

". . . Marcher Lord Press offers no author advances. None. Authors receive a much higher royalty rate, but get nothing in advance. (Neither do they pay—Marcher Lord Press is not a vanity press or self-publishing entity.)"

They go on to say that their business plan calls for only online sales. If you're at all interested, you should check it out.

The Guardian had an interesting article about Joanna Kavenna winning the Orange New Writer Award. Her novel Inglorious is by no means spec fic, but I liked what the author had to say about the seven novels (or in a different article, 13) she wrote before she got this one published: "I see it as an apprenticeship, rather than thinking I squandered 10 years."

I think that speaks to the importance of optimism as a trait that furthers one's goals. I also liked her comment on the chick-lit label: "I don't understand what chick-lit means, and to a degree it's just used to dismiss quite a lot of writing by women. ...It's a blanket term that renders a wide variety of literature frivolous. It's used either to dismiss the writing or to avoid thinking about it."

Considering that the related Orange Broadband Prize, the British award for the best English-language novel published in the UK and written by a woman, exists because some people felt that women writers weren't getting enough recognition, it's an interesting comment. I don't know of such an award in the US. Does anyone else?

British papers seems to write about books a lot, especially genre books. I tripped over a May 10th Telegraph article about the Arthur C. Clarke Awards; according to this article, genre readers care much more about awards than mainstream readers (maybe we're obsessed with respect?). The article also made the point that while mainstream readers can look down on genre books, science fiction readers have been known to throw hissy fits when books that are not out-and-out science fiction win science fiction prizes. However, the article gives us points for realizing that "the fact that there is a spaceship in a book does not prevent it from being well written."

Here's my favorite quote from the article:

"...if you will not read a novel because it is set on another planet, or has a robot in it, you are cutting yourself off from some of the most exciting and urgent writing now being produced."

I'm well into The Yiddish Policemen's Union now. I'm enjoying it, in spite of the present tense. I don't entirely understand why Chabon went with present tense, as to me, it doesn't add anything, but I forgive him. This book is clearly alternate history, a subgenre that science fiction claims as its own, and Chabon handles it well. Sometimes when non-genre writers commit genre, to use Ursula LeGuin's phrase, they fall into pitfalls that genre writers learn to sidestep.

LeGuin points out an example in her review of The Stone Gods, a science fiction book by literary writer Jeanette Winterson. LeGuin refers to the phenomenon known here in the U.S. "As you know, Bob" (although she calls it, "As you know, Captain") in which one character explains something to another so that the reader will understand it, even though it is in fact something that everyone in the invented universe already knows. LeGuin forgives Winterson for falling into this particular pitfall because she is witty, but Chabon needs no such excuse. His story unfolds in its own time and space, and the reader learns his invented history by inference or by his characters' actions or reminiscences on their past lives, not by reading info dumps. Also, apparently Winterson has her characters vocally despise science fiction, something for which LeGuin chides her.

I must say, as complimentary as LeGuin is in her review, I had no desire to rush out and buy The Stone Gods. There are lots of well written science fiction books; I don't have to give my money to someone who trashes my genre while trying to make a buck (or a pound, in this case) out of it.

One of my favorite new shows is The Big Bang Theory. I already blogged about liking the link between genius and science fiction. But last night's episode reminded me that I also like the way they have a smart woman as well as smart guys. Yes, it's only a 1-to-4 ratio, but at least Leslie Winkel got her chance to shine last night. And also, Leslie seems a good deal better adapted to society than our four very bright but socially clueless guys, so that's a kind of balance.

But really, I love the show because of the writing—clever, witty, fun, and loaded with in-joke science fiction references. What's not to like?

GalleyCat had an item about the winner of the 2007 Tiptree Award. The book sure sounds a lot like Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale to me, but one thing I found interesting was that the book was published last year in the U.K. as The Carhullan Army but in the U.S. it's Daughters of the North.

The cover shown in the GalleyCat item is what I would call a literary fiction cover—a soft focus close-up of a woman's face. That combined with the fact that the publisher ditched the U.K. title in favor of one with no unfamiliar words (I think Carhullan is a place in Britain but if you don't know that, it sounds made-up) suggests the publisher (HarperPerennial) wants a book that says "shelve me with the mainstream books, please." I wonder if the publishers will be pleased to win a speculative fiction award or not?

Be interesting to see if they even mention it. Although to be fair, the author herself seems quite comfortable with the spec fic designation.

Well, I'm not the only one wondering why everyone is obsessing about spec fic covers. I saw the topic first on GalleyCat, but with goes-around-comes-around karma, it's everywhere. I blogged about it, and then Lou Anders of Pyr commented on my blog (technically, he commented on Scott Edeleman's astute observation about not alienating readers) and then he blogged about my post on his blog Bowing to the Future, where he also described Orbit Books blog. Meanwhile on GalleyCat there is yet another post, this one mostly on Tor art director Irene Gallo's blog entry on the topic.

Well, as she is an art director, I guess she gets paid to worry about it. I guess Lou Anders does, too, as he is kind of an everything director at Pyr.

I'm not getting paid, but I do find it interesting, especially because one of the covers Lou mentions is for Matter by spec fic writer Iain M. Banks (a.k.a., Iain Banks when he's writing mainstream). It's a fantastic cover, but it's the M in his name I'm wondering about. Who else uses a middle initial to distinguish himself/herself by genre? Do anyone know of other authors who do this? Unlike Margaret "Don't call it science fiction" Atwood, he's not saying he doesn't write science fiction, just that some of his books are spec fic and some aren't, and you can tell by the M! Kinda a neat idea, actually.

I blogged last fall about a WFC panel on book covers because I happened to notice a GalleyCat item on some abstract covers for British editions of several spec fic books. GalleyCat waxed enthusiastic over how good the abstract covers looked, but I cited the WFC panelist Lou Anders of Pyr, who commented on how a too-abstract cover might hinder more than help a work as far as science fiction fans were concerned. A lively round of comments ensured.

GalleyCat appears to be interested in science fiction book covers because they have another item on the subject, this time a comparison of British and American versions of the covers for Charles Stross's Halting State and Ken McLeod's The Execution Channel. In the case of the McLeod book, GalleyCat finds a parallel between the near-future "accessible" science fiction of the story and the more-thriller-than-science-fiction covers in both the US and the UK. The Stross book, on the other hand, got a much more impish, gaming-oriented cover in the UK but a "digitized high-fantasy look" in the US, where the publisher seemed more interested in matching the tone of Stross' other books.

What is it about book covers that fascinates us so that we're compelled to analyze them? Perhaps it's because we realize it is so often the cover that makes us pick the book up in the first place.

Not a fun thought for a writer, but still likely to be true,

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award is down to the 10 finalists! There is one entry that sure sounds like spec fic (The Prospect of My Arrival by Dwight Okita) and another that could be spec fic but it's hard to tell (Wrecking Civilization Before Lunch by John Ring). Neither is what I would call "traditional" science fiction--science and technology extrapolated to future events or societies. Prospect is more like philosophical spec fic and Wrecking sounds more like absurdist fiction (why would anyone want a floating Barbie Dream House?). No traditional fantasy, either.

The rest of the top ten are mainstream or mystery with at least one historical (I think it has to be pre-World War II to be called historical, but I'm not positive).

The word "foundation" means a base for something, and that something can be almost anything—a building, makeup, or even an organization. It turns out there is a Speculative Literature Foundation! Who knew? I certainly didn't.

They have been around since 2004. Supported largely by volunteer efforts, they maintain a website for speculative fiction readers, writers, editors and publishers; perform outreach (mostly providing book lists) to schools and libraries; and raise and distribute funds to support quality work by individuals and organizations, including giving grants to writers.

There's even a grant to "older writers" (deadline for applications is March 31) I guess the tough part is, you have to admit you're over 50 to get it.

An item on GalleyCat points out that Michael Chabon is poised to make history. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I blogged about earlier because the Coen brothers are planning a movie version, is on the ballot for the Nebula and the Edgar and may also make the Hugo ballot! The Wikipedia entry for the novel calls it an "alternate history detective story."

Michael Chabon is one of SFWA's newest members, and one of the few big name authors who uses genre elements without dissing the label. He obviously understands the appeal of creating a new reality (one of the characters in TYPU supports his heroin habit as a chess hustler!). We'll have to see if he can pull off a hat trick.

My Helpful Friend alerted me to an interesting post on the Guardian books blog about the growing number of women writing fantasy. Blogger Damien Walter mentions the science fiction side of the house first—Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, and Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree—before going on to talk about fantasy writers like Kelly Link and Catherynne M. Valente.

Since it's a blog, other folks weighed in and commented on his opinions, some arguing with his positive assessment of these writers' style, and others agreeing. There was a lot of discussion of some lines from an early work by Valente called Labyrinth:

"My body is bound with guitar strings, nipples like fawn's hooves strumming E minor chords ..."

Some people found this intriguing, while others found it nonsensical. After several pro and con comments on these and other works, the comments included one by (this is the wonderful thing about blogs) Catherynne M. Valente! She pointed out that her style had changed over the years, so that not every reader would necessarily like all her books.

It's an interesting discussion. I'm lucky MHF pointed it out to me!

Valentine's Day is coming up, which makes me think about the meaning of the word romance. According to the Wikipedia entry for romance as a genre, the word started life with a capital R, and meant a secular work, written in a Romance language rather than serious a religious, scientific, or philosophical work, written in Latin.

Now, of course, when people hear "romance", they think bodice ripper—a bare-chested hunk on the cover holding a babe in a low-cut dress. But a recent article in the Guardian about a British author who won the award for (British) Romantic Novel of the Year, suggests making the word back into an adjective. Freya North, author of Pillow Talk, wants to call her work "romantic fiction" instead of either romance or chick lit. Her award-winning plot involves a sleepwalker and an insomniac. The two protagonists are long-lost childhood sweethearts who run into each other after 17 years apart.

As a proponent of the broad term "speculative fiction," I can hardly disagree with North. I am all for broads in fiction.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to write a book that millions read in which the protagonist is a detective or to write a style-laden meandering epic that a few thousand people read? My Helpful Friend has been busy again and sent me a link to this article which again addresses the question "Does genre need to be transcended?" This time the writer is talking about crime and mystery fiction instead of spec fic, but it's the same question. Any time a reviewer says a work "transcends" the genre, what he means is, "This one good, all other genre bad."

It's an old question, but this article has an interesting point, made in this paragraph:

And, even in literature, the view that highbrow fiction is somehow all broadly worthwhile does not long survive service on the jury of a book prize. Parcel after parcel arrives of books that somehow contrive to be both plotless and proseless, often involving near-escapes from sexual abuse on seaside holidays in childhood. Yet these works do not smear an entire type of fiction, in the way that [a certain best seller] does, for the simple reason that they remain largely unknown.

So, what the author is saying is that bad genre drags down good genre, but bad literary fiction can't drag down good literary fiction because no one reads it. I consider that an interesting point, and, in one sense, a feather in genre's cap.

In the old TV show The Jeffersons, an early episode included a bit where a black woman who worked in the same building as the "deluxe apartment in the sky" made friends with Louise Jefferson thinking she was the Jefferson's maid. On discovering that the building now had not only one African American matron (Louise) but a second on in the person of Weezy's friend Helen Willis, the woman exclaimed something along the lines of, "Well, damn! How come we overcame and nobody told me?"

I feel almost the same way. I just saw an article by Clive Thompson in WIRED from January 18, on why science fiction is the new home for profound works. The article is called "Clive Thompson on Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing".

Here's a quote: "And there are, at the risk of sounding superweird, only so many ways to describe reality."

True! And with spec fic, that number becomes infinite. Thompson gives a solid example of the way science fiction can illustrate an interesting concept with an analysis of Cory Doctrow's novella "After the Siege," in which the invention of a "replicator" causes world-wide conflict and suffering instead of an end to poverty and hunger.

First the British, and now the geeks! Next thing you know, Michael Chabon will join SFWA! Wait, that did happen! Maybe like George and Louise, we've finally got our piece of the pie?

The New York Times recently ran a list of 100 “notable” books (fiction and poetry) from 2007. I looked through it carefully but except for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the only thing approximating spec fic that I could see was Micheal Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. At first I figured those were the only notable spec fic books in 2007 [ -) ], but then I read the intro, and it says the list was compiled only from books the NY Times reviewed, so that explains it.

On the other hand, GalleyCat ran a nicely organized month-by-month review of what happened in publishing for the year, with links to the fuller stories.

It's the first day of 2008! Happy New Year, everyone!

I couldn't remember the time frame for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, so I checked. If you're interested, they got their 5,000 entrants already. They're now busy making sure the entrants all meet their eligibility requirements. It's not clear, but from the FAQ, it sounds like Amazon "Top Reviewers" and Amazon editors are also reading the excerpts (first 5,000 words) of the entries and selecting the 1,000 Semi-Finalists. Starting January 15, they will begin posting the excerpts for those 1,000 semi-finalists for Amazon customers and Publishers Weekly editors to rate and review. The FAQ says that Penguin editors will then select and read the complete manuscript for up to 100 [emphasis mine] "Top Semi-Finalist" entries based on that feedback. At that point, Penguin editors will select 10 entries from the 100 as Finalists. Amazon customers will then pick the winner from the finalists.

That's the (somewhat complicated) contest logistics. I found this information (posted by Amazon) on the contest entrants interesting:

* Registered authors represent nearly 2,000 different cities worldwide and 22 countries (including South Africa, Denmark, Malaysia, Argentina, and more)

* There is at least one author from every one of the 50 states (and the District of Columbia, too) registered for the contest

* Of the novels submitted for consideration, 42% fall into the general fiction category; 25% are mystery, thriller, and suspense; 18% are science fiction and fantasy; 8% are historical fiction, and 7% are romance.

I found the breakdown by genre to be the most interesting statistic. My perception from attending the Pikes Peak Writers Conference for four years is that a huge percentage of aspiring writers are writing speculative fiction. But in this contest, only 18 percent of the m.s.s. were classified as science fiction or fantasy. Did I somehow attract my own ilk more at PPWC? (Could there be a spec fic pheromone?) Was that conference not representative of the general writerly population? Or did spec fic writers not try to enter this contest, somehow assuming that genre didn't have a chance? I can only assume the romance writers thought that, because I believe there a huge number of them.

Difficult to say for spec fic.