During the Andre Norton Breakdown, I eliminated 2 nominees as for being for adults, one (with some agonizing) as being for children, and was ambivalent about how to categorize one other. So it's fair to ask what my rules are for classifying something as YA.
This may be the hardest call to make in all of literature, at least since the advent of the YA (as opposed to "teen books") concept. Back in the 90s I had an opportunity to ask a buyer for one of the megabookstores how she selected which book went into which section, and her response was "Trim size." In certain bookstores I routinely find paperback Diana Wynne Jones books in the "Fantasy" section among adult titles, and hardbacks (sometimes of the same books) in the "Juvenile" section. Agents and publishers and authors, when asked, tend to go with the age of the protagonist, the cut-off age at the lower end being usually thirteen or fourteen, and at the upper anywhere from 17 to 21. And then you go into the library and find Eleanor Updale's Montmorency books, with their protagonist who is an adult in all senses of the word on page one, book one, in the YA section; and you read them and agree that's where they belong.
This is an extension of a situation readers of fantasy and science fiction have been wrestling with for a long time. Once upon a time, back in the 70s, a prime reason I never stopped going to the children's section when I hit adulthood was that, at that time, if a book was fantasy and had no overt sexuality, librarians automatically shelved it among the children's books. I think the Gormenghast trilogy, which I read all the way through and disliked, was the only fantasy I ever found in the adult shelves. The adult half of the larger libraries had separate science fiction and mystery sections, where you could find much that I would these days class as YA, but Patricia McKillip and Tolkien were on the juvenile shelves - in hardback. Lin Carter was editing the Adult Fantasy line for Ballantine Books, which got fantasy into the spinner racks. Come to think of it, that's how I first got into the adult section - checking the spinner racks for those back-to-back Bs that spelled "fantasy" on that side of the wall.
As the 20th century wound down, this became less of a given; more and more often, the fantasy I found in the children's section of the library was in fact for children; and the "science fiction" sections in bookstores became "science fiction and fantasy" several years before the signs began reflecting the change. For awhile it was popular among the fen* to gripe about this lumping, but either I don't hang out in those circles anymore or most people have relaxed about the distinction between the two genres. The term "speculative fiction" has arisen to cover the editorial behind.
But when you get down to it, the difference is primarily about imagery. If the bearded wise man wears a lab coat, it's science fiction, even if there's no scientific justification for what he does. If he wears a robe, it's fantasy, even if the things he does are rooted in theoretical physics. If time travel is accomplished by machine, it's science fiction in spite of having some species of archaic sapiens in America; if by dreams, it's fantasy, even if the author has spent seven years researching the archeology, paleontology, and anthropology to get her Pleistocene setting into line with what is known. (Yeah, that'd annoy me if I let it.)
Anyway, all genres are like this. Some horror is fantasy, some science fiction, some realistic, some realistic except for an occult edge. Some romance is paranormal; some fantasy is romance; some adult fiction is YA and some YA is for children. Bambi was published in Europe as adult fiction - my 1929 Simon & Schuster edition has a foreword by John Galsworthy - and became a children's book in America because books with talking animals are for children. Even the lines between "true" and "made up" blur sometimes.
In fact, all categories are like this. Half to three-quarters of the definition arguments on this earth could be eliminated if we'd face up to this fact: A classification is not a real entity. It is a convenient way to talk about real entities that share certain qualities; but which classification an entity belongs in will shift depending on which qualities are regarded as important at a particular moment.
Consider my button accumulation. As I am not a dedicated seamstress, I don't have what I consider to be lots of buttons; but I have enough (mostly snipped frugally from old clothes) that, to save time when I need one, I decided I needed to divide them up. I realized when I dumped them out that I had a number of viable ways to categorize them, all of which would be useful in a different situation. Size? Number of holes? Color? Plastic and metal? Flat or hemispherical or funky shapes? If there's a "funky shapes" category, might it not include other kinds of fasteners, such as frogs or hooks-and-eyes, that I had assumed didn't belong in the same container as buttons?
A barn is a house, if one lives in it. If residence constitutes houseness, because style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses of Eskimos -- or a shell is a house to a hermit crab -- or was to the mollusk that made it -- or things seemingly so positively different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the sea-shore are seen to be continuous.
(Charles Fort, Book of the Damned, Ch. 1)
People sometimes resent having this drawn to their attention, and most of the time it doesn't matter. But in the endless discussion of whether a book is YA or juvenile or adult, fantasy or science fiction or magical realism, it saves time to face up to it. The important thing is to send the manuscript to the agent who will believe in it and knows the editor who will like it at the house that will publish it, and locate the book in the part of the library, bookstore, or catalog where the person who will like to read it can find it. That's all that matters. Once you think of it in those terms, everything looks much simpler.
Not easier, necessarily. But simpler.
*"Fen" is the plural of "fan," as in "science fiction fen," in case you aren't of that subculture.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: The Vampire with Iron Teeth
The normal course of casual noodling around among Fortean sources led me to this story earlier this week: Child Vampire Hunters Sparked Comic Crackdown. It's a feature from the British press, basically advertizing a BBC program about the 1954 incident, to be broadcast on March 30. I presume it'll get to American cable in a year or so.
The core attractive element for the juvenile/YA writer is this: Hundreds of children aged from four to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling inside the historic graveyard.
Their target? A 7-foot tall vampire with iron teeth that had already eaten two children. The police broke up the mob, but so convinced were these kids, not only of the vampire's existence, but of their responsibility to bring him down, that many of them sneaked back out that night and the following one to resume patrol.
Personally, I think that shows a lot of spunk. Kids who'd behave like that are kids who'd make great protagonists. However, the parents in the neighborhood were, understandably, more concerned with the possibility of their children mistaking each other for vampires in the dark. As an author, I can see how you could make a thriller out of events either way: a supernatural battle to which the adults are stubbornly oblivious, or would-be heroes wrongheadedly charging off into tragedy on a tide of emotion unchecked by facts.
No children were in fact missing, and it's not clear what started the rumor, which brings us to the other interesting facet of the tale. Although the local boogyman was known as the Iron Man (it was an iron-industry area, and an ironworks overlooked the graveyard) and there are iron-toothed monsters in the Bible and in a poem taught in local schools (text not given, and a quick google gives me no good candidates), parent groups seized on the ever-popular idea of blaming the media.
EC horror comics were hard to get and therefore highly desirable in the area, and in 1953 Dark Mysteries #15 featured a story titled "The Vampire with Iron Teeth." So, it must be all the fault of comics nobody had ever read acting on passively impressionable youngsters as if by magic instead of (heaven forfend!) actively imaginative youngsters creating a social phenomenon on their own. To anyone interested in censorship, moral panic, and mob action, the symmetry of the parents' charging after the imaginary Evil Brainwashing Comic Book in response to their children's charging after an imaginary Evil Bloodsucking Vampire is almost too perfect.
Possibly, what this needs is a book-length non-fiction treatment for the middle-school market. In fact, absolutely, someone should do that! But there's at least two or three other novels lurking in there, too. I'd have to change the setting, presumably to modern Texas, but perhaps it would work best as a period piece. I live, after all, in the home of the Moral Panic, but nobody wants to hear that about themselves. It can be safer to displace such behavior in time, into the days of McCarthyism and lynching when everyone is acknowledged to have behaved badly, but We Know Better Now. (No, we don't.)
How the story plays out depends a lot on who your protagonist is, whether there are or are not any missing children, and whether or not you want to use supernatural elements. Is there a real monster? Is there a human murderer? Is there a ringleader in the mob, perhaps a campfire storyteller whose creation runs away with him? How much of the mirrored cases of mass hysteria are based in sincere but wrongheaded emotional reaction and how much is a matter of conscious manipulation of media? How in control of their own actions are the characters?
I'm much too deep in other projects to deal with this embarrassment of riches right now. Feel free to take it on for me, and I promise to read what you come up with. You won't do it the way I would, but that's fine.
The core attractive element for the juvenile/YA writer is this: Hundreds of children aged from four to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling inside the historic graveyard.
Their target? A 7-foot tall vampire with iron teeth that had already eaten two children. The police broke up the mob, but so convinced were these kids, not only of the vampire's existence, but of their responsibility to bring him down, that many of them sneaked back out that night and the following one to resume patrol.
Personally, I think that shows a lot of spunk. Kids who'd behave like that are kids who'd make great protagonists. However, the parents in the neighborhood were, understandably, more concerned with the possibility of their children mistaking each other for vampires in the dark. As an author, I can see how you could make a thriller out of events either way: a supernatural battle to which the adults are stubbornly oblivious, or would-be heroes wrongheadedly charging off into tragedy on a tide of emotion unchecked by facts.
No children were in fact missing, and it's not clear what started the rumor, which brings us to the other interesting facet of the tale. Although the local boogyman was known as the Iron Man (it was an iron-industry area, and an ironworks overlooked the graveyard) and there are iron-toothed monsters in the Bible and in a poem taught in local schools (text not given, and a quick google gives me no good candidates), parent groups seized on the ever-popular idea of blaming the media.
EC horror comics were hard to get and therefore highly desirable in the area, and in 1953 Dark Mysteries #15 featured a story titled "The Vampire with Iron Teeth." So, it must be all the fault of comics nobody had ever read acting on passively impressionable youngsters as if by magic instead of (heaven forfend!) actively imaginative youngsters creating a social phenomenon on their own. To anyone interested in censorship, moral panic, and mob action, the symmetry of the parents' charging after the imaginary Evil Brainwashing Comic Book in response to their children's charging after an imaginary Evil Bloodsucking Vampire is almost too perfect.
Possibly, what this needs is a book-length non-fiction treatment for the middle-school market. In fact, absolutely, someone should do that! But there's at least two or three other novels lurking in there, too. I'd have to change the setting, presumably to modern Texas, but perhaps it would work best as a period piece. I live, after all, in the home of the Moral Panic, but nobody wants to hear that about themselves. It can be safer to displace such behavior in time, into the days of McCarthyism and lynching when everyone is acknowledged to have behaved badly, but We Know Better Now. (No, we don't.)
How the story plays out depends a lot on who your protagonist is, whether there are or are not any missing children, and whether or not you want to use supernatural elements. Is there a real monster? Is there a human murderer? Is there a ringleader in the mob, perhaps a campfire storyteller whose creation runs away with him? How much of the mirrored cases of mass hysteria are based in sincere but wrongheaded emotional reaction and how much is a matter of conscious manipulation of media? How in control of their own actions are the characters?
I'm much too deep in other projects to deal with this embarrassment of riches right now. Feel free to take it on for me, and I promise to read what you come up with. You won't do it the way I would, but that's fine.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Andre Norton Breakdown, Pt. 2
So, research done, proceeding to evaluation. First, a quick review of what I'm reading for. A book could be the best book published last year and not fit award criteria. So, how is the Andre Norton Award defined?
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., (SFWA®) has created this new literary award to recognize outstanding science fiction and fantasy novels that are written for the young adult market. ... Any English-language book published as a young adult science fiction/fantasy novel is eligible, including graphic novels with no limit on word length or country of origin. Votes are cast by SFWA members in conjuction with the Nebula Awards.
Taking them in order read, how does each book match up?
Ash, by Malinda Lo. I read this months ago. It wasn't "just" a lesbian Cinderella, but what I chiefly remember is a dreamy familiarity. No crying, no laughing, no vivid images rising in my mind's eye. Shouldn't "outstanding" stick out in my head more?
Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi - okay, it's science fiction, and it's not bad, for half a book. I kept thinking as I read it that I was missing chunks of story, and I was right. The other half is contained in The Last Colony, which was published in 2006. And you know what else? It doesn't qualify. It was not "written for the young adult market." It's part of a series written and marketed for adults; the author admits in the end matter that he wrote this book in response to disatisfaction with what had been the last book in that series; and though he does a good job of the YA narrator and should consider the market, that doesn't make it a YA book. No vote.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead won a Newbery and was checked out with holds on it all over my library system, which is a good sign. And it is science fiction/fantasy - eventually. Most of the time it reads like a domestic novel, but it does deal with time travel from the point of view of someone in the past affected by a future time visitor, which gets her out of any need to explain the mechanism. It's full of clues and hints for the alert reader to pick up on, and I like that. It doesn't really tie my brain into a knot the way time travel stories should, though. And - you're going to think I'm a horrible nitpicker, but - I'm not sure it's YA. The age of the protagonists, the themes, and the style all say "MG" to me, as they did to the librarians who placed it in "juvenile." But as we all know, the boundaries between those two sections are fluid.
Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield. Cracking story, definitely SF/F (depending on exactly where you put his Weird Science steampunky tech), YA without question. Loses a point for not telling a full story, but since it's the first of a series that's not a big deal. I never felt that I was being shortchanged during the book.
Eyes Like Stars, by Lisa Mantchev. Fantasy, YA, another first in series, fun to read. I had problems with the worldbuilding that I could ignore while reading but that leaped out at me every time I put the book down. Where are the Players when not on call? Every play? Does that include the one-act plays we do in grade school, or the unproduced plays like Tolkien's "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son?" Could you define the term more? Why does anybody come to this theater if you never do new productions? If the Players only play one role why aren't they identical to that role? These things bother me. No vote.
Hotel Under the Sand - Kage Baker. I love this book. I would have loved this book when I was nine, though I wouldn't have understood it as well. It's got themes you can grow into and it's funny and it's dramatic and you can read it more than one way and this is what it's all about, people. I'm tempted to vote for it just for the line "No bully is a match for a dreadful ghost, or for two determined ladies with a cannon." But. Criterion. No way in heck is this YA. This is a children's book. The protagonist is 9. The themes and the way they're presented are ideal to encounter in elemetary school and revisit throughout the rest of your life. It's the best of the lot and I wish it had gotten more notice (any notice) in the industry but the fluidity of the juvenile/YA boundary is not fluid enough to let me vote for it for a YA award. Dagnab it.
Ice, by Sarah Beth Durst. This, on the other hand, is as YA as they come. It's pretty hard to do the Psyche story (technically, "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," but at the motif level it's all the same) without being YA. And it's good. The fact that I find the heroine annoying for most of the book doesn't change that. The only time I like her at all is when she's insisting on having her own work and figuring out how to make that fit her new lifestyle, which is sympathetic. But everything else about her grates so hard on my nerves I'm having trouble deciding whether the book itself is outstanding or merely good.
This left me with The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making. As I mentioned, hate the title - it sounds, oh, what's the word? Cutesy? Phony? But I'm prejudiced by its only being available online - inconvenient to read and self-published! - so I shrug that off and dive in. Unfortunately, yesterday was a bad balance day. I felt crappy, my defenses were low, and by the third chapter I was hiding under the desk crying; "The adverbs! The adverbs! Oh, the horror!" I understand this has been picked up by Feivel and Friends, so maybe when it comes out as a book, having undergone an editing process and been purged of words like "rather" and "quite," it'll be readable, but right now it's like a rough draft of what a children's book is supposed to be, built on an inperceptive reading of late 19th-early 20th century British fantasy and played to the gallery. And, by the way, the author addresses her audience once, as adults, so I'm allowed to stop there and say she's disqualified herself for this award. Whew.
Used to, we were asked to rank each nominee, with points awarded for all the different rankings a book received and the winner having most points. This year, we're supposed to vote for only one, and it appears that the only book that qualifies about which I have no reservations is Leviathan. So that's that.
I'd have voted for Hotel Under the Sand if I could.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., (SFWA®) has created this new literary award to recognize outstanding science fiction and fantasy novels that are written for the young adult market. ... Any English-language book published as a young adult science fiction/fantasy novel is eligible, including graphic novels with no limit on word length or country of origin. Votes are cast by SFWA members in conjuction with the Nebula Awards.
Taking them in order read, how does each book match up?
Ash, by Malinda Lo. I read this months ago. It wasn't "just" a lesbian Cinderella, but what I chiefly remember is a dreamy familiarity. No crying, no laughing, no vivid images rising in my mind's eye. Shouldn't "outstanding" stick out in my head more?
Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi - okay, it's science fiction, and it's not bad, for half a book. I kept thinking as I read it that I was missing chunks of story, and I was right. The other half is contained in The Last Colony, which was published in 2006. And you know what else? It doesn't qualify. It was not "written for the young adult market." It's part of a series written and marketed for adults; the author admits in the end matter that he wrote this book in response to disatisfaction with what had been the last book in that series; and though he does a good job of the YA narrator and should consider the market, that doesn't make it a YA book. No vote.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead won a Newbery and was checked out with holds on it all over my library system, which is a good sign. And it is science fiction/fantasy - eventually. Most of the time it reads like a domestic novel, but it does deal with time travel from the point of view of someone in the past affected by a future time visitor, which gets her out of any need to explain the mechanism. It's full of clues and hints for the alert reader to pick up on, and I like that. It doesn't really tie my brain into a knot the way time travel stories should, though. And - you're going to think I'm a horrible nitpicker, but - I'm not sure it's YA. The age of the protagonists, the themes, and the style all say "MG" to me, as they did to the librarians who placed it in "juvenile." But as we all know, the boundaries between those two sections are fluid.
Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield. Cracking story, definitely SF/F (depending on exactly where you put his Weird Science steampunky tech), YA without question. Loses a point for not telling a full story, but since it's the first of a series that's not a big deal. I never felt that I was being shortchanged during the book.
Eyes Like Stars, by Lisa Mantchev. Fantasy, YA, another first in series, fun to read. I had problems with the worldbuilding that I could ignore while reading but that leaped out at me every time I put the book down. Where are the Players when not on call? Every play? Does that include the one-act plays we do in grade school, or the unproduced plays like Tolkien's "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son?" Could you define the term more? Why does anybody come to this theater if you never do new productions? If the Players only play one role why aren't they identical to that role? These things bother me. No vote.
Hotel Under the Sand - Kage Baker. I love this book. I would have loved this book when I was nine, though I wouldn't have understood it as well. It's got themes you can grow into and it's funny and it's dramatic and you can read it more than one way and this is what it's all about, people. I'm tempted to vote for it just for the line "No bully is a match for a dreadful ghost, or for two determined ladies with a cannon." But. Criterion. No way in heck is this YA. This is a children's book. The protagonist is 9. The themes and the way they're presented are ideal to encounter in elemetary school and revisit throughout the rest of your life. It's the best of the lot and I wish it had gotten more notice (any notice) in the industry but the fluidity of the juvenile/YA boundary is not fluid enough to let me vote for it for a YA award. Dagnab it.
Ice, by Sarah Beth Durst. This, on the other hand, is as YA as they come. It's pretty hard to do the Psyche story (technically, "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," but at the motif level it's all the same) without being YA. And it's good. The fact that I find the heroine annoying for most of the book doesn't change that. The only time I like her at all is when she's insisting on having her own work and figuring out how to make that fit her new lifestyle, which is sympathetic. But everything else about her grates so hard on my nerves I'm having trouble deciding whether the book itself is outstanding or merely good.
This left me with The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making. As I mentioned, hate the title - it sounds, oh, what's the word? Cutesy? Phony? But I'm prejudiced by its only being available online - inconvenient to read and self-published! - so I shrug that off and dive in. Unfortunately, yesterday was a bad balance day. I felt crappy, my defenses were low, and by the third chapter I was hiding under the desk crying; "The adverbs! The adverbs! Oh, the horror!" I understand this has been picked up by Feivel and Friends, so maybe when it comes out as a book, having undergone an editing process and been purged of words like "rather" and "quite," it'll be readable, but right now it's like a rough draft of what a children's book is supposed to be, built on an inperceptive reading of late 19th-early 20th century British fantasy and played to the gallery. And, by the way, the author addresses her audience once, as adults, so I'm allowed to stop there and say she's disqualified herself for this award. Whew.
Used to, we were asked to rank each nominee, with points awarded for all the different rankings a book received and the winner having most points. This year, we're supposed to vote for only one, and it appears that the only book that qualifies about which I have no reservations is Leviathan. So that's that.
I'd have voted for Hotel Under the Sand if I could.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Andre Norton Breakdown
It's that time of year again and I'm within spitting distance of finishing my research on my vote for the Nebula Award, given every year by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Actually, I don't give two hoots about the Nebula itself most years; the Andre Norton Award for YA SF is almost always the only vote I cast. And that's plenty of work all on its own, because between my inability to keep up with my own field and the bizarro nature of the typical roster of nominees it's rare for me to have read any of them before the final ballot appears. I'm resolved to pay more attention this year, but I resolved that last year, too, and here we are.
The thing about the Andre Norton Award nominees is that, due probably to the way the nominations are made - with SFWA members who happen to think about it during the year nominating books that happen to impress them, and the ones that get the most nominations during that period making the final cut - and the nature of the SFWA membership, which is mostly authors of adult science fiction and fantasy, there isn't much overlap with the books that are buzzed, listed, and awarded in the YA industry. Most of the authors don't read YA on purpose, don't understand how it differs from juvenile or adult literature, and don't take it seriously. Many of them are trying to live down the dictum that "the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve," rather than embracing it as they should. On the other hand, the YA they read and like isn't influenced by the librarians, school review sources, and social networks that drive the awards within the industry. So the fact that the list often seems like it came from a different universe isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least there's almost always something wonderful I might not have run across without it.
On the other hand, it's a fair amount of work. This year, of the nominees, I had read Malinda Lo's Ash at the time the nominees were announced in February. John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale was at the Enchilada, but hidden away in the adult SF section where the odds of my running across it were approximately nil. Others were also in the library system, but either checked out, in process, or on hold at the central location I can bus to, so I planned the most efficient route and drove to branches. I got lucky and found both of the most "mainstream" nominees, Scott Westerfield's Leviathan and Rebecca Stead's Newbery-winning When You Reach Me at the same library on the near southeast side. However, to get Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars I had to drive several miles north of beyond and get on the Death Loop among all the evil subdivisions.
Sarah Beth Durst's Ice and Kage Baker's Hotel Under the Sand weren't in the San Antonio Library System at all, but I have an indy bookstore and I'm not afraid to use it. My special order on those two came in last Saturday and I've read Hotel and am about halfway through Ice.
The last book isn't even a book. The Girl Who Navigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente is available online for "donations" and won't be a real book I can read on the balcony or in the bathroom until next year. Although I could have read it at any time during the past month, I resent this a lot and have put it off till last. Also, I hate the title. But I'm an honest voter and will get it done.
The deadline to vote is March 30. I'm probably the only one going to all this trouble for this particular award. The fact that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows beat out The True Meaning of Smek Day in 2007 is proof enough of that. (I promise you, if everybody who voted for Potter had read Smek Day, it would have been a landslide for the funny SF!) But I'm not responsible for them; I'm responsible for me.
So go read them all and on Thursday I'll come back and discuss each title. I'll be finishing Ice at lunch, probably, and that leaves plenty of time to read that online thing. If I can sit at the computer that long.
The thing about the Andre Norton Award nominees is that, due probably to the way the nominations are made - with SFWA members who happen to think about it during the year nominating books that happen to impress them, and the ones that get the most nominations during that period making the final cut - and the nature of the SFWA membership, which is mostly authors of adult science fiction and fantasy, there isn't much overlap with the books that are buzzed, listed, and awarded in the YA industry. Most of the authors don't read YA on purpose, don't understand how it differs from juvenile or adult literature, and don't take it seriously. Many of them are trying to live down the dictum that "the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve," rather than embracing it as they should. On the other hand, the YA they read and like isn't influenced by the librarians, school review sources, and social networks that drive the awards within the industry. So the fact that the list often seems like it came from a different universe isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least there's almost always something wonderful I might not have run across without it.
On the other hand, it's a fair amount of work. This year, of the nominees, I had read Malinda Lo's Ash at the time the nominees were announced in February. John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale was at the Enchilada, but hidden away in the adult SF section where the odds of my running across it were approximately nil. Others were also in the library system, but either checked out, in process, or on hold at the central location I can bus to, so I planned the most efficient route and drove to branches. I got lucky and found both of the most "mainstream" nominees, Scott Westerfield's Leviathan and Rebecca Stead's Newbery-winning When You Reach Me at the same library on the near southeast side. However, to get Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars I had to drive several miles north of beyond and get on the Death Loop among all the evil subdivisions.
Sarah Beth Durst's Ice and Kage Baker's Hotel Under the Sand weren't in the San Antonio Library System at all, but I have an indy bookstore and I'm not afraid to use it. My special order on those two came in last Saturday and I've read Hotel and am about halfway through Ice.
The last book isn't even a book. The Girl Who Navigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente is available online for "donations" and won't be a real book I can read on the balcony or in the bathroom until next year. Although I could have read it at any time during the past month, I resent this a lot and have put it off till last. Also, I hate the title. But I'm an honest voter and will get it done.
The deadline to vote is March 30. I'm probably the only one going to all this trouble for this particular award. The fact that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows beat out The True Meaning of Smek Day in 2007 is proof enough of that. (I promise you, if everybody who voted for Potter had read Smek Day, it would have been a landslide for the funny SF!) But I'm not responsible for them; I'm responsible for me.
So go read them all and on Thursday I'll come back and discuss each title. I'll be finishing Ice at lunch, probably, and that leaves plenty of time to read that online thing. If I can sit at the computer that long.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: The Story of George
A long time ago, when I was first starting to do school visits back in the mid-nineties, I was in front of a class of second graders. This is younger than I should really be talking to, but I think it was part of a festival, or maybe it was one of those times when the only way the school can do the visit is if you see a range of grades, I don't remember. With older kids I have a variety of presentations (fewer then than I do now), but with younger kids I tend to fall back on the presentation that works with everybody: How to Get an Idea.
Different people use the same basic concept, but in my version, I get a kid to flip a coin. Heads, our idea will center on a female; tails, on a male. (Yes, this is simplistic, but the visiting author is the wrong person to introduce the concept of intersex and transgender individuals to a second-grade class. Unless you're intersex or transgender yourself, of course, in which case congratulations on getting a school visit in our conservative educational system and I have no advice to give you.)
Call for ideas from the class. What is this character's name? What does he look like? What are his strengths? What are his weaknesses? You as temporary authority will get the final choice among the suggestions offered, so as to create a little coherence and avoid cliches, and will be able to gauge the overall character of the class. (Make sure you don't get the name of anybody who's in the actual class, by the way.) One class will come up with a flying dog superhero named Abracazam and another class will come up with an orphan illegal immigrant named Josefina, and your job is to roll with it. This particular class created George, a black second-grade nerd with thick glasses and suspenders, whose strengths were that he was smart and could program computers, but whose weaknesses were that he was short, a physical wimp, and shy.
I rely heavily on the formulation that a plot = character + conflict; or, as I put it to the second-graders, a story is about a person with a problem. So what problem should George have? A number of routine suggestions were made, but I kept pressing them for something a little more interesting. One kid said: "He gets beat up a lot." I said, yeah, that was a realistic problem, but if we go with that, we have to generate a villain, too. Who is it that's beating him up, and why? A flurry of suggestions came - the class bully, his big brother, a drug dealer - and then somebody said: "His little sister beats him up."
And I said "Oooooh."
I had to reject a couple of silly developments on this idea - the sister could not realistically be two years old - but once they got the idea the class was forthcoming. His sister was a year younger than him (I don't remember what they named her), but taller and stronger, and she pushed him around because she could. Well, you would, wouldn't you? At that age, the temptation would be irresistible. And poor George would be in a serious bind, because the one person in the world you cannot hit back is your little sister! And as for tattling, forget it - no one is going to admit to being physically bullied in this situation. He's going to have to outsmart her. But the obvious counterattacks - set her up to get into trouble; devise personal armor; set traps for her - are only going to escalate the tension. Setting her up makes her mad and increases the bullying; she'll find vulnerabilities in the armor. Ultimately they're going to have to come to terms and make a truce. You could introduce a common enemy against whom they have to gang up; or George could come up with a revenge trap so fiendish that it makes his sister cry and they both learn from the experience; or or or...
We did not generate an ending because we didn't have time, but also because I like to end this presentation by pointing out that every person in the room could leave the room and write the story of the characters and problem we'd just been discussing - and we'd all write a different story. My hope is that at least some of the kids will indeed sit down and finish on their own; and it gives the teacher a hook on which to hang extra credit if she wants to.
I never did anything with George, and I don't know whether this class did or not, but I treasure the memory of his creation and I think this is one of the more brilliant ideas I've ever been a part of, sparkly with possibilities. Why I don't write this story I couldn't tell you. Possibly it's too close to home, our family having been a pretty savage one on the sibling rivalry front. I've never done well when I tried to write a straight domestic novel.
So I share him with the world, both as a strong concept in his own right, and as an example of what ordinary people can come up with in less than an hour, if given the opportunity and a mental framework.
Different people use the same basic concept, but in my version, I get a kid to flip a coin. Heads, our idea will center on a female; tails, on a male. (Yes, this is simplistic, but the visiting author is the wrong person to introduce the concept of intersex and transgender individuals to a second-grade class. Unless you're intersex or transgender yourself, of course, in which case congratulations on getting a school visit in our conservative educational system and I have no advice to give you.)
Call for ideas from the class. What is this character's name? What does he look like? What are his strengths? What are his weaknesses? You as temporary authority will get the final choice among the suggestions offered, so as to create a little coherence and avoid cliches, and will be able to gauge the overall character of the class. (Make sure you don't get the name of anybody who's in the actual class, by the way.) One class will come up with a flying dog superhero named Abracazam and another class will come up with an orphan illegal immigrant named Josefina, and your job is to roll with it. This particular class created George, a black second-grade nerd with thick glasses and suspenders, whose strengths were that he was smart and could program computers, but whose weaknesses were that he was short, a physical wimp, and shy.
I rely heavily on the formulation that a plot = character + conflict; or, as I put it to the second-graders, a story is about a person with a problem. So what problem should George have? A number of routine suggestions were made, but I kept pressing them for something a little more interesting. One kid said: "He gets beat up a lot." I said, yeah, that was a realistic problem, but if we go with that, we have to generate a villain, too. Who is it that's beating him up, and why? A flurry of suggestions came - the class bully, his big brother, a drug dealer - and then somebody said: "His little sister beats him up."
And I said "Oooooh."
I had to reject a couple of silly developments on this idea - the sister could not realistically be two years old - but once they got the idea the class was forthcoming. His sister was a year younger than him (I don't remember what they named her), but taller and stronger, and she pushed him around because she could. Well, you would, wouldn't you? At that age, the temptation would be irresistible. And poor George would be in a serious bind, because the one person in the world you cannot hit back is your little sister! And as for tattling, forget it - no one is going to admit to being physically bullied in this situation. He's going to have to outsmart her. But the obvious counterattacks - set her up to get into trouble; devise personal armor; set traps for her - are only going to escalate the tension. Setting her up makes her mad and increases the bullying; she'll find vulnerabilities in the armor. Ultimately they're going to have to come to terms and make a truce. You could introduce a common enemy against whom they have to gang up; or George could come up with a revenge trap so fiendish that it makes his sister cry and they both learn from the experience; or or or...
We did not generate an ending because we didn't have time, but also because I like to end this presentation by pointing out that every person in the room could leave the room and write the story of the characters and problem we'd just been discussing - and we'd all write a different story. My hope is that at least some of the kids will indeed sit down and finish on their own; and it gives the teacher a hook on which to hang extra credit if she wants to.
I never did anything with George, and I don't know whether this class did or not, but I treasure the memory of his creation and I think this is one of the more brilliant ideas I've ever been a part of, sparkly with possibilities. Why I don't write this story I couldn't tell you. Possibly it's too close to home, our family having been a pretty savage one on the sibling rivalry front. I've never done well when I tried to write a straight domestic novel.
So I share him with the world, both as a strong concept in his own right, and as an example of what ordinary people can come up with in less than an hour, if given the opportunity and a mental framework.
News of ill omen
Sid Fleischman died on St. Patrick's Day. I read about it yesterday morning at the School Library Journal site. He'd turned 90 the day before. I used to be able to say the names of all of McBroom's children, but now I'm not even sure if the word ends "andMelinda" or "andClarinda."
Yesterday was the equinox, and Dallas got 6" of snow. It was pretty chilly here, too, mostly because of high winds. Global warming - colder winters, hotter summers.
And Moby is running hot, so we'll have to take him to the car doctor after the body work is done and we can get his hood open. And I had no balance far too much of the past half week. I suspect balance issues had something to do with the accident, but I can't prove it one way or another.
So why do I feel optimistic right now? Partly because it's full-on spring here - the redbuds are on their way out, the banksia is blooming, and the oaks have shed their pollen and put out leaves. And partly because my online writing group has had a spate of sales lately. And partly, I suspect, because of things my chemicals are doing that have little or nothing to do with exterior stimuli.
Yesterday was the equinox, and Dallas got 6" of snow. It was pretty chilly here, too, mostly because of high winds. Global warming - colder winters, hotter summers.
And Moby is running hot, so we'll have to take him to the car doctor after the body work is done and we can get his hood open. And I had no balance far too much of the past half week. I suspect balance issues had something to do with the accident, but I can't prove it one way or another.
So why do I feel optimistic right now? Partly because it's full-on spring here - the redbuds are on their way out, the banksia is blooming, and the oaks have shed their pollen and put out leaves. And partly because my online writing group has had a spate of sales lately. And partly, I suspect, because of things my chemicals are doing that have little or nothing to do with exterior stimuli.
Friday, March 19, 2010
News! Humans on Flores a Million Years Ago
Well, that's what the tools say. On the one hand, they've been disturbed; on the other hand, they were disturbed before the volcano put new rock on top of them. Note also the lack of correlation between human presence and animal extinction. This story gets better and better every time somebody puts a trowel in the ground.
Hobbit Island's Deeper History
And if you're wondering how those tools differ from rocks - go to a lab with lots of lithics and talk to the flintknapping guy. It takes practice, but natural breaks and worked surfaces are distinguishable, and a lot of experimental work has been done in this area - because flintknapping is fun and doesn't take a lot of specialist equipment, so you don't even need grant money to experiment.
Also, it appears that our brains function via the scientific method? That's counterintuitive, given how hard it is for people to grasp how the scientific method works in real life. Or maybe that's a result of poor science education? Or maybe the reporter is distorting what his interview subjects said? (They do that, you know.) "Less Effort to Register Predictable Images."
Hobbit Island's Deeper History
And if you're wondering how those tools differ from rocks - go to a lab with lots of lithics and talk to the flintknapping guy. It takes practice, but natural breaks and worked surfaces are distinguishable, and a lot of experimental work has been done in this area - because flintknapping is fun and doesn't take a lot of specialist equipment, so you don't even need grant money to experiment.
Also, it appears that our brains function via the scientific method? That's counterintuitive, given how hard it is for people to grasp how the scientific method works in real life. Or maybe that's a result of poor science education? Or maybe the reporter is distorting what his interview subjects said? (They do that, you know.) "Less Effort to Register Predictable Images."
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