The Great Urban Fantasy Cover Pose off: Jim Hines v John Scalzi

Jim Hines in a typical breakback urban fantasy cover pose

A while back, fantasy author with a sense of humour Jim Hines did two posts mocking (urban) fantasy covers. In the first one he imitated cover poses female heroes found themselves in, in the second he took on their male counterparts. That made him as famous around the internet as John Scalzi is for taping bacon to a cat. Now he decided to harness his powers for good, doing a series of cover poses for charity:

Aicardi Syndrome is incurable. It’s hard to diagnose. It’s scary and overwhelming, and most people have never heard of it.

The Aicardi Syndrome Foundation is pretty much the only source in the United States for funding into research on this condition. The foundation also funds a family conference every two years, paying for hotel rooms, flying in researchers, and even covering many of the meals. It unites families fighting this disease, connecting them to a network of support they might otherwise never find.

I’m asking people to donate to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation. In exchange, I will give you what the internet has deemed my most important contribution to society: ridiculous cover poses. All you have to do is email me at ASF@jimchines.com letting me know how much you donated. If you give more than $25, please include a copy of your receipt from the foundation.

Responses have been overwhelming, which has led to Jim’s first pose as shown above and also meant that he reached one of his first stretch goals: $1,000 in donations means a pose off with John Scalzi. Which is better: Jim’s specially shaved legs or Scalzi’s frighteningly blonde wig and little black dress? You decide! Btw, there’s still time to donate and one of the next goals is a group pose including Charlie Stross…

McAuley on the essential fortyfour fantasy novels

As a sequel to his list of fortyeight essential science fiction titles, Paul McAuley has now revealed a similar list of fortyfour essential fantasy and horror titles and he’s asking for help to bring the list up to fifty. Like the other list, it is to be used in teaching a creative writing class or something like that and there’s a not quite arbitrary cutoff year of 1984. Bolded are the ones I read, struck through the ones I don’t think belong. Notice by the way that both lists start with the same book.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus MARY SHELLEY 1818
Tales of Mystery and Imagination EDGAR ALLAN POE 1838
A Christmas Carol CHARLES DICKENS 1843
Jane Eyre CHARLOTTE BRONTE 1847
The Hunting of the Snark LEWIS CARROLL 1876
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ROBERT LOUIS STEPHENSON 1886
The Well At The World’s End WILLIAM MORRIS 1896
Dracula BRAM STOKER 1897
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary MR JAMES 1904
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things LAFCADIO HEARN 1904
The Wind in the Willows KENNETH GRAHAME 1908
Jurgen JAMES BRANCH CABELL 1919
A Voyage to Arcturus DAVID LINDSAY 1920
The King of Elfland’s Daughter LORD DUNSANY 1924
The Trial FRANZ KAFKA 1925
Lud-in-the-Mist HOPE MIRRLEES 1926
Orlando VIRGINIA WOOLF 1928
The Big Sleep RAYMOND CHANDLER 1939
The Outsider and Others HP LOVECRAFT 1939
Gormenghast MERVYN PEAKE 1946
Night’s Black Agents FRITZ LEIBER JR 1947
The Sword of Rhiannon LEIGH BRACKETT 1953
Conan the Barbarian ROBERT E HOWARD collected 1954
The Lord of the Rings JRR TOLKEIN 1954-5
The Once and Future King TH WHITE 1958
The Haunting of Hill House SHIRLEY JACKSON 1959
The Wierdstone of Brinsingamen ALAN GARNER 1960
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase JOAN AIKEN 1962
Something Wicked This Way Comes RAY BRADBURY 1963
The Book of Imaginary Beings JORGE LUIS BORGES 1967
Ice ANA CAVAN 1967
One Hundred Years of Solitude GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ 1967
Earthsea URSULA LE GUIN 1968-1972
Jirel of Joiry CL MOORE collected 1969
Grendel JOHN GARDNER 1971
The Pastel City M JOHN HARRISON 1971
Carrie STEPHEN KING 1974
Peace GENE WOLFE 1975
Gloriana, or the Unfulfill’d Queen MICHAEL MOORCOCK 1978
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories ANGELA CARTER 1979
Little, Big JOHN CROWLEY 1981
The Anubis Gates TIM POWERS 1983
The Colour of Magic TERRY PRATCHETT 1983
Mythago Wood ROBERT HOLDSTOCK 1984

Like his science fiction list, this is interesting as it both shows a fairly consistent take on fantasy and horror, consistent with the earlier list, as well as some strong clues to his own influences. There’s a lot of pre-Tolkien British fantasy/weird fiction on the list, quite a few recognised literay classics as well as a fair smattering of intelligent genry fantasy, again mostly pre-Tolkien, and finally the sort of fantasy equivalent to New Wave science fiction like Moorcock’s Gloriana.

It’s cutoff date means it misses a fair few important writers I would’ve put on my list (Glen Cook, Steve Brust, Mary Gentle, Steve Erikson, George R. R. Martin), as does its bias against genre fantasy (Stephen Donaldson for one). The one writer that really jumps out at me however, that fits the mood of the list is Avram Davidson, whose collection Or All the Seas with Oysters should be on it, as it’s an excellent collection by a master of the American fantasy tradition at the peak of his powers.

(The reason I struck out The Big Sleep is not that it’s a bad book, but it’s neither fantasy nor horror in my opinion.)

Cry of the Newborn — James Barclay

Cover of Cry of the Newborn


Cry of the Newborn
James Barclay
819 pages
published in 2005

James Barclay is not a writer I had heard of before I got this book out of the library. The backcover blurb sounded interesting and the frontcover sported a quote by Steven Erikson, one of my favourite fantasy writers, so while the first few pages I sampled were a bit dull I thought I’d take a chance. The library also had the sequel, but I didn’t put that one up as this was big enough already; I could always get it next time. But I don’t think I will. Erikson’s blurb said that Cry of the Newborn was “a most extraordinary and impressively ambitious novel”, but in reality it was just a bog standard epic fantasy novel. Not a bad novel by any standards, competently written certainly, but nothing special.

[…]

The second objection is more fundamental. The world Barclay has created is presented as if the Concord is a force for good, described in terms which argue that the Estorian hunger for empire is not driven by base motives, but out of a noble desire to create order and stability. Trouble is, I don’t buy it. Looking at it objectively, the Concord is just not that nice, happily waging wars of conquest only to then suck the conquered countries dry for further conquest, not to mention the enrichment of the Estonian elite. Sure, by author fiat there’s little of the cruelity on display practised by real world empires like the Roman or British Empire and it’s even fairly gender neutral, with the current ruler of the Concord being a woman, and with various viewpoint characters being female soldiers and officers, but this is just window dressing. I just could not see the Concord as the good guys, or help root for the supposed baddies, who after all only wanted to live in peace in their own country. Fantasy is a somewhat conservative, some would even say reactionary genre and I can overlook some of the more …odious… assumptions in a given novel if the story is right, but not this time.

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Vellum – Hal Duncan

Cover of Vellum


Vellum
Hal Duncan
501 pages
published in 2005

It’s rare that you get to read a book about which you can genuinely say that you’ll either love it or hate it. Usually this phrase is just hype, an attempt to make a book seem more controversial than it really is. Most books just bimble along without evoking either great hatred or great love in their readers. Vellum however is not such a book. It is genuinely a book you’ll love or loathe becauses, depending on your feelings, it’s either an incredibly stylish tour de force remaking of the fantasy novel, or self indulgent bloated nonsense, with glitzy prose masking a story devoid of any meaning. Myself, I can find some sympathy for both readings.

Hal Duncan is a new author; Vellum his first published novel. He seems to fit in loosely with that generation of fantasy writers that includes China Miéville, Justina Robson, Jeff VanderMeer and Susanna Clarke. I must admit he only appeared on my radar last year, when his
name cropped up on various science fiction blogs, which is why when I saw this book in the library I took a gamble on it. A gamble that paid off, fortunately. Vellum is an ambitious book, both in the story it tells as in how it tells it, that almost manages to fulfill its ambitions.

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Can litfic ever measure up to fantasy or sf?

Fantasy and science fiction writer and fan Jo Walton had an interesting post up today about whether mainstream, literary fiction can ever be as good as the best science fiction and fantasy novels:

In one section, she states that some well-regarded people think Middlemarch the best novel in the world, ever. I stopped and looked suspiciously at this, turned the idea around a few times, and cautiously considered that in fact perhaps Middlemarch did deserve to be considered in the same company as Lord of the Rings, Cyteen, A Fire Upon the Deep, The Disposessed and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. (That grinding sound you hear? F.R. Leavis turning in his grave?) But you know, not really. Because it’s just an awful lot easier if you get the world ready made for you. That’s my main objection to people who say mainstream and fanfic can be as good as original SF. People can juggle two balls awfully well, and Middlemarch and Dark Reflections both do that, in their different ways, about as well as it can be done. But that still can’t really compare to people who are juggling four.

Please do not think this is the usual reverse snobbery of a certain kind of science fiction fan denying that traditional literary values are worthless; what Jo is saying is much more interesting than that. She argues that all other things being equal, writing a good literay novel is easier than writing a sf/fantasy novel, because in the second case the writer has not just to invent the plot and characters and such, but the entire world in which their story takes place and make this world accesible to their readers. Mainstream authors on the other hand do not need to do so, as they can confidently assume their readers has a certain familiarity with the world in which their novels take place.

It’s an interesting, almost seductive theory, but I don’t think it’s right. For I start I think that Jo both underestimates the work mainstream authors have to do to make their settings convincing and overestimates how much science fiction writers need to do. Just like a mainstream author does not need to explain what a car or horse is, neither does a sf writer need to explain how a hyperdrive works or what a positronic brain is. We know already, because we’ve seen these concepts in movies and television series, in cartoons even, not to mention some eighty odd years of science fiction stories. Meanwhile any mainstream author who doesn’t set their story in a setting that is right here and right now will have readers to whom this setting is new, who may not stumble over things like horses and cars, but who will stumble over say the position of women in society.

Take Jane Austen for example, writing in a society in which women almost literally had no rights at all, where women had to marry or face starvation. This is a setting that is almost unimaginable to a modern audience, yet the genius of Austen lies in making clear this essential horror even to us, without writing for us. That is a feat few science fiction authors can emulate.

Mainstream writers also have another set of balls to juggle that sf/fantasy authors need not bother with: making sure that the settings they create “feel real” to their readers. Asimov could imagine Trantor anyway he wanted it to look, because Trantor is not real. But Ian Rankin needs to make sure the Edinburgh of his novels is simular enough to the real one to convince those readers who know it….

So no, I don’t think sf writers juggle more balls than mainstream writers. Just different balls, at times.