Wis[s]e Words

Science fiction linkage: Joanna Russ and the Gollancz experiment

Published on July 20, 2011

Graham Sleight tells us about the book project he has been working on for the last couple of years, the collected short stories of Joanna Russ:

Perhaps I should explain. In, I think, 2006 or 2007, Farah Mendlesohn very kindly asked me to write a chapter on Joanna Russ’s short fiction for a book she was editing; this became On Joanna Russ (Wesleyan, 2009). At the time, Wesleyan were reprinting a number of Russ’s novels. Via Farah, a request came through. Wesleyan were interested in publishing a Collected Stories of Joanna Russ, but the bibliography seemed a bit complicated. Would I be interested in working with Joanna to sort it out? I would, I said, and began corresponding with Joanna. Over the course of several years and a lot of airmail post, we worked out the contents list, the texts to be used, and the scholarly apparatus. In addition to the published collections, the book would contain about another collection’s worth of unpublished material. (About a quarter of this Joanna referred to as “Ghastlies”, meaning early work she wasn’t that keen on; but most of it was astonishing, like the late hilarious story “Invasion”. Most is not from the sf field but rather from small literary/feminist magazines.) I sent the completed MS off to Wesleyan in late 2008 and waited.

This book is currently in limbo, but needs to happen, a fitting tribute to one of science fiction’s best writers. Sadly much of her work seems to be out of print now, while it’s not very easy to find secondhand either, at least not here. I’ve rarely seen her work in the secondhand bookstores I browse in.

This is not an unique position a sf writer can find themselves in of course; apart from the obvious classics, most of science fiction’s history is out of print. Gollancz aims to change this, by launching the Science Fiction Gateway. From their press release:

Gollancz, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, announces the launch of the world’s largest digital SFF library, the SF Gateway, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks.

Building on the remarkable success of Gollancz’s Masterworks series, the SF Gateway will launch this Autumn with more than a thousand titles by close to a hundred authors. It will build to 3,000 titles by the end of 2012, and 5,000 or more by 2014. Gollancz’s Digital Publisher Darren Nash, who joined the company in September 2010 to spearhead the project said, “The Masterworks series has been extraordinarily successful in republishing one or two key titles by a wide range of authors, but most of those authors had long careers in which they wrote dozens of novels which had fallen out of print. It seemed to us that eBooks would offer the ideal way to make them available again. This realization was the starting point for the SF Gateway.” Wherever possible, the SF Gateway will offer the complete backlist of the authors included.

Gollancz has always been one of the most important, if not the most important publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the UK, both commercially and for the development of the genres. If any publisher can make this project work it’s them, but will all depend on how this gateway will work in practise. They’re getting at least one thing right, by going for volume from the start, rather than being cautious in what they’re offering and by going for the backlist as well as new titles. Now all they need to do is make sure all those minor little details like pricing, ease of purchase and how to handle territorial copyright, digital rights management, not to mention which formats to publish in and so on.

What I want from the SF Gateway is being able to buy all of Joanna Russ’ backlist, for about the same money that I could get them from a secondhand bookstore from — they should not be more expensive than a new mass market paperback — and do so hassle free, with no DRM or nonsense about not allowed to buy them because I’m not in the UK.

Carefully not using the i-word

Published on July 20, 2011

Henry Farrell’s impassionate attack on Matty Yglesias’ bloodless technocracy sure does read like, erm, bloodless technocracy:

But equally obviously, they are not the whole of politics nor anywhere near it. Policy is not made, in the US or anywhere else, through value-neutral debate among technocrats about the relative efficiency of different proposed schemes. Hence, the need for a theory of politics – that is, a theory of how policy proposals can be guided through the political process, and implemented without being completely undermined. And this is all the more important, because (on most plausible theories of politics) there are interaction effects between policy choices at time a and politics at time a+1. The policy choices you make now may have broad political consequences in the future. Obvious examples include policies on campaign spending, or union organization, which directly affect the ability of political actors to mobilize in the future.

This remains a debate on policy implementation taking place within a narrow band of acceptable political opinion, with the difference between Yglesias and Farrell being that the first is a policy wonk, the latter more of a politics wonk, but neither seems comfortable contronting the more fundamental question of ideology, nor are the commenters.

What should’ve been the Rule 34 cover blurb

Published on July 19, 2011

From the humongous NotWMurdoch hacking scandal tread on Blood & Tresure comes this gem of a description of Charlie Stross’s Rule 34 courtesy of ajay:

A book of the same title has just been published – it’s by Charlie Stross and is basically ((“Ken MacLeod” – “explanations of Trotskyite splinter groups”) + (“Christopher Brookmyre” – “comedy violence”) * (“Ian Rankin” – (“jazz” + “whisky”)) + (“Cory Doctorow” – “inability to create convincing characters or dialogue)).

(Though I’d put “Rolling Stones albums” rather than jazz for Ian Rankin.)

QotD: centrist cat fight!

Published on July 19, 2011

Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell wrote a post about the limits of left neoliberalism, to which Brad DeLong left a snotty comment, to which Chris Bertram in turn responded with the blog equivalent of a napalm strike:

Well as usual, Brad is busy constructing boxes to put people in. Those who read his blog will know that when he isn’t sneering at those to his left, he is sighing and groaning at all those policymakers who fail to grasp that reason dictates the adoption of his preferred solution which is in the best interest of everyone. I wonder why they don’t adopt his policies then? What could the explanation be? Oh … Henry may be right and the fact is that he doesn’t have any grasp of political power and mobilization.

[…]

(Actually, I’m being unfair to Brad. He does have a theory of politics. It is that people would see the pure light of wisdom radiating from people like him, if only those pesky people to his left would shut up and stop frightening the horses.)

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Connie Willis: bland, bad, popular

Published on July 18, 20111 Comment

Andrew Hickey is not subtle in his criticism of Connie Willis and her latest novels Blackout/All Clear, concluding:

This is someone who has apparently had a successful writing career for as long as I’ve been alive. On the evidence of this utter, appalling, piece of shit, this travesty, this disgrace that makes Dan Brown look like a more elegant and refined version of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I can only assume that she has incriminating photos of the head of publishing at Spectra, her publishers, and of the people who choose the Hugo shortlists. In which case, I can only say to let her release the photos – they could hardly do more damage to your reputations than these books do.

I haven’t read these novels, but all the flaws Andrew mentions were also present in her older novels like e.g. To Say Nothing about the Dog. She has a fondness for screwball comedy plotting, where all the problems her protagonists have to deal with are largely caused by them not talking to each other, prefering to run around like headless chickens. She’s not very good at creating believable villains either, for whom cardboard would be a compliment as she just cannot imagine anybody wanting to oppose her characters. Don’t read her novels for their plot. What’s more, despite her genuine Anglophilia, she’s sloppy in her research, her vision of England barely a step above say the Phantom Rasberry Blower of Old London Town, to say nothing of the atrocities she allows her characters to perpetuate on the Queen’s English.

Idiot plotting, bad research, padding and yet Willis is incredibly popular and a perennial Hugo candidate and winner. She must be doing something right and indeed her saving grace is her gift at storytelling. She’s a good read, not too demanding, easily digestable and flatters the reader outrageously by hitting them over the head with her “subtle” allusions — she makes sure you know To Say Nothing about the Dog is a homage to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat and praises you for getting it.

Connie Willis, like a whole slew of other bland but persistently popular sf writers (Robert J. Sawyer, Allan Steele, Mike Resnick to name three), is popular because she never underestimates her audience. She knows the trick of spoon feeding her readers without being blatant about it, ladling out easily digestable story and complimenting her readers’ ability to swallow. Judging from everything I’ve heard about Blackout/All Clear however, she has now lost that knack and all that remains are the flaws. If she wins the Hugo for it, it would be the final nail in its coffin.