Fantastic Reviews Interviews Paolo Bacigalupi

Here’s a new interview with Paolo Bacigalupi, and like every interview I’ve seen with him this one is profoundly thoughtful and interesting. Here’s a section that really struck a chord with me, because it’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about too:

Fantastic Reviews (FR): We had a whole category like that, the Heinlein and the Norton, science fiction written for teenagers, which they just don’t publish any more.

Paolo Bacigalupi (PB): Not just for teenagers, but for boys. [My wife, a teacher] has a lot of Newbery Award-winning books – The House on Mango Street is an amazing, wonderful book; it just doesn’t work for boys, though. Boys want adventure, they want to go out and do shit, you know?

It strikes me that there’s sort of a trend right now to say that good children’s literature is not adventure literature. Almost by default that means that good children’s literature is not literature that’s well-geared for boys. So at that point, boys who are already predisposed to fuck themselves up when they’re at school then have one less reason to engage with learning. It’s horrifying enough to watch the way my wife has had to deal with boys in her classes. These are bright boys, but they’ve got very little to grab onto. They can only read Ender’s Game once, and that’s it. What else are they going to do after that? You can throw them a Starman Jones, you can throw them a Citizen of the Galaxy, but those are dated and they’re getting more dated.

That’s something I think about. What would it be like to write boys’ stories, really honest boys’ stories that are designed to help boys actually get engaged with reading again, instead of thinking that’s a girl activity, which is where it feels like things are going. I find that deeply troubling, so that’s something I’ve been thinking about, what would a YA boys’ story or a juvenile boys’ story look like these days?

It’s interesting, because if you think of something like Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, at the very end, the main character who has grown up and become a young man by the end of it, his triumphant moment is beating up the bully who was troubling him back on Earth. He gets back to the soda fountain and he beats up the bully, and that’s the cathartic success at the very end. I don’t think those endings are even allowed; I don’t think you can do that now. And that strikes me as an expression that certain qualities of boy-ness are no longer allowed. That alpha-male ape behavior is not OK any more. We’re going to put you guys, you little boys, in a certain role that says: don’t do anything dangerous, don’t do anything crazy, by all means don’t get in any fights, and don’t think that there is any alpha-male stuff going on, even though it is because that’s how your brain has been hard-wired for the last million years. Suppress your nature instead of channeling your nature.

For a number of years now I’ve helped out with Alpha, a summer fantasy & science fiction writing workshop for younger writers. Graduates of the workshop were very well-represented among the winners of this year’s Dell Magazines Award for undergraduate science fiction. Congrats to Seth Dickinson, Rebekah White, Sarah Miller, and Emily Tersoff for placing stories in the contest.

By the way, the application deadline for this summer’s Alpha workshop is March 1st, so there’s still time to apply.

I can’t help but be struck by how much of a difference Alpha (and the internet in general) has made for new writers. During my freshman year of college, I placed first in this contest. At that time I had been writing and submitting fiction for years and had never met or even corresponded with anyone who was serious about writing fantasy & science fiction. I actually didn’t even know anyone who was serious about reading fantasy & science fiction. After I got the call telling me I’d won, I strolled down to the frozen pond behind my dorm to play pick-up hockey. My best friend at college was there, and I told him I’d won this contest, and he was kind of like, “Um, that’s cool,” and that was the extent of my plaudits. These days, all the Alpha students (even the ones who attended during different years and have never met) keep in touch and congratulate each other.

I sometimes wonder if people who grew up with the internet can really appreciate how profoundly it used to suck, pre-internet, to be even the slightest bit noncomformist or to have interests that were even the tiniest bit esoteric. Before the internet, my only glimpse into the world of fantasy & science fiction writers was through coming across the very rare author’s introduction that would discuss the writer’s life. These were: An introduction by Isaac Asimov — which appeared in several of his robot novels — in which he discussed the history of robots in science fiction and also how he came up with his Three Laws of Robotics; Robert Asprin’s introduction to his novel Myth Inc Link, in which he discussed the origins of his Myth series, as well as his appendix to the first Thieves World anthology, in which he discussed how he came up with the concept of a shared-world anthology; and the introduction to Larry Niven’s The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton (in which Niven discusses the history of science fiction/mystery stories), and also some of his essays on writing that were included in his N-Space collection. And that was it.

I probably read each of those introductions more than a hundred times. They were all I had … until one day when I discovered, in my high school library, a few massive hardcover tomes that contained a few pages of autobiographical / bibliographical / critical notes on a variety of authors. I photocopied all the entries about science fiction writers — which took forever — and slowly began to assemble a filing-cabinet full of these articles at home, so that I could peruse them at will. Today, of course, you could probably spend a solid year online doing nothing but reading interviews with and reviews of fantasy & science fiction writers and still have barely scratched the surface.

Anyway, yay for the internet, and again, yay for everyone who placed stories in this year’s Dell Magazines Award.

I just got word that my short story “Red Road” will be appearing on Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

“Red Road” is an animal quest fantasy / political allegory … with a twist. Think Lord of the Rings meets Animal Farm. Thanks to John Joseph Adams for inadvertently inspiring me to write this story. (He recommended a book to me, but cautioned that the book contained talking animals. I said, “No, that’s cool. I like talking animals.” Then later I thought: Hey, yeah, I do like talking animals … and yet I’ve never written about talking animals. I should write a story that has some talking animals. Then my mind flashed back to a joke I made involving talking animal stories years ago at the CSSF writing workshop, and I thought: You know what, I’m going to turn that joke into a story. It’s so crazy, it just might work. “Red Road” is the result.)

My Grandfather, Roger Barr, was profiled in this month’s UUSS newsletter (Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento). Here’s a sample:

“To many of us he is legendary. Roger Barr, this month’s UUSSer, is truly an amazing man. After all, how many people start snowboarding when they’re 80 years old? Roger did, and he hiked from Yosemite Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney (43 days of solo hiking) to celebrate his 80th birthday. When he was 55, he did the same hike in only seven days, 35 miles per day. His 85th birthday celebration was hiking all 200+ miles of the Lake Tahoe Rim Trail. One summer, after his 80th year, he climbed the 10,000+ ft. Pyramid Peak 25 times!! This writer went on one of those climbs and decided at the end that she would rather be shot than try it again! Some of us in the congregation have talked about getting T-shirts stating, “I survived a hike with Roger Barr.” Clair Urness once likened a hike to some mountain top with Roger to The Bataan Death March! No, no, we all really do enjoy being with Roger on an outdoor adventure. He knows so much about the mountains, the topography, the flora, and fauna; and he definitely knows how to survive in the wilderness. Roger can regale you with his fascinating adventure stories like falling through the ice in a mountain lake, or being eyeball to eyeball with a bear (while naked!), or crossing paths with a cougar, or ending up in a snow-created tree well upside down with cross country skis—still attached—across the hole, or snow camping in blizzards, and near misses of falling off cliffs. Among Roger’s outdoor activities are backpacking, skiing (downhill, cross country, and snowboarding), rock climbing, windsurfing, trout fishing, and camping. He has traveled extensively over the North American continent, Costa Rica to Alaska, pursuing those interests. There’s no one who loves, knows, and appreciates the Sierra Mountains more than Roger; they’re his G.O.D. (Great Out Doors).

This entire physical prowess is surely enough to make Roger an amazing man, but his intellect is as keen as his outdoor IQ. He reads avidly and can expound on ideas from science to literature, making a conversation with Roger thought-provoking and intriguing. He says he has had a lifetime interest in natural history, all the arts, classical music, sculpture, painting, and language. Several times he has offered Adult Education classes at UUSS on heady subjects. Roger says that membership at UUSS enhances his life socially, intellectually, and spiritually. It’s definitely a two-way street because UUSS has been greatly enhanced by Roger’s presence.

Roger and his wife of over 63 years, Ruth, have been UUs since 1949 when they joined the UU church in Berkeley, where Roger was a student. They had both been brought up in more conventional religions that they decided weren’t right for them. They liked the motto of the Berkeley church, “Deed not Creed;” and when the minister there told them he thought the church was just what they were looking for, they decided to join. They are among the longest-term members of UUSS, active in our congregation for over 50 years.”

Earlier I linked to this Wall Street Journal article about David Gemmell. I thought the article was interesting, particularly the part about fantasy literature inspiring acts of real-life heroism. I did feel that the article featured some pretty gratuitous right-wing editorializing, which I guess isn’t surprising now that I see that the writer, John J. Miller, works for The National Review, but I let it slide. Though the more I think about it, the more bothered I am by this statement:

“Whereas antiwar films flop at the box office, those that celebrate military heroism, such as last year’s ‘300,’ ring up sales. If Hollywood wants to find a new book-based, war-filled fantasy franchise that repeats the success of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ — and avoids the disaster of ‘The Golden Compass’ — it may want to look to Gemmell for inspiration.”

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions packed into this paragraph that I might take issue with, but the thing that really keeps bugging me is: In what sense is The Golden Compass an “antiwar” movie? (Or, at any rate, insufficiently celebratory of the martial?) I mean, the story gets rolling with the Gyptians blowing away a few Gobblers. Then the movie introduces Iorek Byrnison, a bear who has devoted his whole life to glorious battle, and who redeems himself by kicking the crap out of an evil bear-warrior, thereby saving the day. Then at the end a whole army of witches flies in and kicks the crap out of an army of bad guys and their wolves. So it seems to me that The Golden Compass glorifies military heroism to about the same degree that the Narnia movie or The Lord of the Rings movies do.

So, has this article writer just not seen The Golden Compass? Is it just that The Golden Compass is viewed as anti-Christian, and therefore by association Liberal, and therefore by association antiwar, regardless of the film’s actual contents? Or am I missing something here?

There are a bunch of videos on YouTube now of a recent incident in which LAPD riot police were called in to disperse USC students at a block party that apparently got rather spectacularly out of hand.

Since I’m not on campus much these days, I don’t know anything more about this than is apparent from the video, so at this point my only comment is: Man, I’m glad I don’t live on that street anymore.

Are you in a publishing office and you’re totally bewildered about why 15-year-old boys don’t read fiction books? Well, your prayers have been answered, in the form of this young man, who possesses a charming English accent and also a striking inability to focus his attention for more than five seconds, who’s here to provide a from-the-trenches report on this urgent issue, in a bold piece of investigative journalism entitled: Fiction books suck, including harry potter.

Okay, I admit it’s a bit incoherent at times. For example, how does he know that all the fiction books being published these days suck if he’s only read one in the past four years? And does he really want more books based on real life when his real life apparently consists of posting tirades about his English homework on YouTube? And yeah, maybe it’s true that he’s just venting his personal feelings about a subject that he knows nothing about (in which case maybe he has a bright future ahead of him reviewing horror or science fiction for The New York Times). Still, I have to say that I’m with this kid on some of this stuff. Like when authors “bog us down with all this description … ‘while translucent golden light filled the landscape.'” Yeah, I hate that crap too. Also, I agree that it really wouldn’t be a bad idea if more authors would stop wasting our time and would just go ahead and kill someone on page one.

Hey, I know her! During my first semester at USC, I was a regular at the meetings of the Secular Alliance, a club for students of any or no religious affiliation to meet up and discuss the role of religion in society. The group was a really interesting mix of smart, iconoclastic people, with a wide variety of ages, from first-year undergrads to forty-something grad students, a wide variety of fields of study, from music to neuroscience, and a wide variety of religious views, from hardcore atheists to evangelical Christians. The weekly meetings were one of the highlights of my time at USC. One of the other regulars was singer-songwriter Kina Grannis, who was a junior. I saw her perform around campus maybe three or four times, and I liked her music enough to buy some of her songs off iTunes. So I was startled and delighted to see that she was featured singing during the frickin’ Super Bowl. Wow.

I’ve really been enjoying The Tudors, of which I just finished watching the first season. (I don’t watch TV shows until they come out on DVD, so sorry if this is old news for people.) Though I’m probably a bad person to be offering an opinion, since I’m a sucker for any kind of historical drama — anything involving swords, outlandish costumes, honorifics, and casual bloodshed — and I seem to like ’em all, even the ones that everyone else despises. I think I’m the perfect audience for historical dramas because I love historical settings and don’t care whether or not they’re historically accurate, which seems to be a rare combination. The Tudors is conspicuously low-rent compared to Rome, which was the last series I watched, and as with Rome they made the first episode basically a soft-core porn flick to grab people’s attention and then toned the sex way down in most subsequent episodes, so don’t let the first episode put you off the show (or, depending on your disposition, don’t let it set your expectations too high). Anyway, until HBO gets around to making their A Song of Ice and Fire series (if they ever do), The Tudors is probably the closest I’m going to get to seeing that sort of story on TV.

Speaking of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin has updated the “From My Readers” section of his website, in which people send him fan art as well as photos of pets and/or children that they’ve named after his characters, such as young Nymeria Daenerys Cersei Smidgrodski. (I think it would be awesome if George would name some minor character “Smidgrodski.” Then all four of this girl’s names would be straight out of ASOIAF.) Many of these kids have learned to walk and talk and have gone off to school in the time that George has been working on A Dance with Dragons (Book 5). He remarks, “Have we really been doing this fan page for four years??? That’s scary. Next thing I know these kids are going to be going to college. I do hope I’ve finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by then, at least.” It’s good to see that he’s not losing his sense of humor about it. Man, time does fly, doesn’t it? Has it really been seven years that we’ve been waiting to find out who Coldhands is? Why, it seems like only yesterday that … actually, no, wait, holy crap, it’s been a really long time. You’ve also got to love the fan with the Asshai Girls Make It Hotter T-shirt.