Posts in the "Humor in SF/F" Category

• Humor? There’s no humor in fantasy!

  Humor in SF/F

  A bit late to the party, my friends, but I was missing for good reason. I was attending the GenCon gaming convention, where I’m a part of the GenCon Writer’s Symposium. This was a busier year than most since I had, well, a book to plug this time. So preparations for and the participation in the symposium was a bit crazy.

  And can I say, my goodness, Congratulations to Courtney! It feels like a long time since we started this blog early this year, but I’m sure it’s felt a lot longer for Courtney as she waited for The Whitefire Crossing to hit the shelves. She’s getting wonderful reviews, so do be sure to check it out.

  Ok, on to humor. You know, I’m glad things worked out like they did. I’m not much of a humorist. I don’t read much humor, and I have a horrible time writing it. But while I was at GenCon this past weekend, I moderated a panel on tension in fiction. We were talking about lots of things like action and suspense and mystery and horror. And more things like political machinations, societal pressures, personal expectations, and so on. We started talking about varying tension so that the reader didn’t feel like the amp was always on eleven. I brought up the notion of tension, thinking it could be used to release pressure when it built too high, and another panelist, Dave Gross, said something very interesting about humor with respect to tension.

  (more…)

  Read More...

• The Horror of Laughing Children

  Humor in SF/F

  

  Courtney’s The Whitefire Crossing comes out this week. Check it out here! It looks like a rousing fantasy adventure, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

  The Horror of Laughing Children

  Laughter is horrifying sometimes, and horrific situations can be genuinely funny. But too often horrific situations are accompanied by someone else’s laughter. And you don’t get the joke.

  That’s pretty scary.

  In case you missed the memo, my first novel, coming out in about a month, is a science fiction horror apocalypse called The Panama Laugh.

  It’s funny at points, but it’s not all that funny overall. It’s not a comedy, but comedy is a running theme; there’s a Vaudeville backstory, and a viral media campaign that viewers clearly find campy and amusing, at least partially because they don’t realize that some of the most horrifying elements of the videos are real. Within the context of the novel, I mean, of course. If they were really real, and I was writing a novel about them being real but then being presented as fake to an audience that didn’t know they were real, then that’d be, like, reflexive, right? That’d be, like, Sex, Lies & Videotape for cannibals!

  Laughing, like screaming and/or lashing out physically, is one of the ways humans react to stress or discomfort, social or otherwise. It’s held up as the descriptor of “having a good time.” Go out with friends, “have a few laughs.” We all need laughter in our life. Right? Right?

  But laughing can also be a terrible weapon aimed not at positively releasing tension but at viciously hurting other people. Ever been laughed at on the playground? Like that. Ever felt like something in a comedy routine was wretchedly hateful, racist, misogynist, whatever? Like that. Ever seen the oh-so-funny racial images from the KKK or from Nazi Germany, or read the single-panel cartoons in Hustler? These things hide behind the costume of comedy, but they’re something far more simplistic. They’re hate, pure and simple, and whether the claim “it’s funny” is an excuse or the creator really is that screwed up, it’s often not possible to tell until it’s too late. (more…)

  Read More...

• If you can’t laugh, then you have to cry.

  Humor in SF/F

  How happy am I that Courtney’s  The Whitefire Crossing releases this week? I have been looking forward to reading it for months!

  Humor is integral to a truly good book, whatever the genre. As a person who watches way too many sci-fi/fantasy movies and serials, I have seen so many excellent stories that started out strong but fizzled for want of a few gross gags. I was excited about Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles and Spartacus, but neither had any humor and I got bored after a few episodes. A story without humor is a story that takes itself too seriously and somehow that gets boring. You don’t need much. One crazy nun or a light sprinkling of stupid animal humor will really smooth out an action story. A main character that blows away everyone but snores or pratfalls on occasion makes them more relatable.

  I think the humor in Carrie Vaughn’s ridiculous enjoyable Kitty Norville books and Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking novels are what makes these two stand out in the urban fantasy genre. The stories are not all that different, but the way they tell them has me giggling every time.  In science fiction, Greg Bear has a very light touch with the humor, but it’s there and it’s lovely. I’m not going to retell the jokes. It’s better if you find them yourself.

  I find that it is difficult to keep the humor out of science fiction when I sit down to write it. The thought process goes like this: (more…)

  Read More...

• Poor Yorick

  Humor in SF/F

  Congratulations to Courtney on the release of The Whitefire Crossing! It looks like an amazing book and I’m excited to clear off my TBR pile enough to get to it.

  ——-

  So, I have very little experience reading SF or fantasy novels that are explicitly humorous, or branded as such. I don’t think there’s any such thing as humorous horror in literature – but damn I love me some Ghostbusters. I’m wearing my Gozerhead t-shirt right now.

  When I hear someone refer to humor as a genre, I immediately think of David Sedaris or P.G. Wodehouse or even Woody Allen’s classic story collection, Without Feathers.

  I’ve mentioned this before, but in advertising we use humor to get under our audience’s radar since everyone from children to geriatrics are so advertising-savvy, nowadays.  You can’t flash a pair of boobs or just show someone how your product takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ and expect to sell anything. Sigh. Those were the good old days of constant boobage and guys strapping Timex watches to the props of motor-boats. (more…)

  Read More...

• Grimly Optimistic in All Things…

  Humor in SF/F

  

  People have been trying to get me to read happy, funny books for years.

  The funniest book I read recently was NO HERO by Jonathan Wood. It was about brain squid, possession, explosions, dark magic, and involved a lot of deaths. Also, heads being chopped off.

  But it has some very light-hearted moments, guys! And jokes!

  What?

  So, yeah, I am not a reader of humor books, or “funny” fantasy. I have a very particular brand of humor that is not slapstick funny. Folks have been pushing Terry Pratchett books at me for years, and let’s not even talk about all those horrific Piers Anthony things. I just don’t read very many books with happy popcorn endings and rollicking wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor. In fact, in my reading life, a book with a happy ending is a book where the protagonist doesn’t die horribly.

  That said, grim books which are grim all the time can be relentless, and there’s something to be said for folks who can write dark books that understand that humor and grim optimism are how we get through the bad shit in our lives. Best Served Cold is a bloody, violent book in which terrible things happen to terrible people, but Abercrombie figured out when and how to slow down the grim and give the characters a chance to breathe and interact – oftentimes with much levity. And just as often, of course, with unexpected deaths.

  Erm. What? (more…)

  Read More...

• Exaggerated Realism

  Humor in SF/F

  “The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.” –Moliere

  Happy release day to Courtney and The Whitefire Crossing! Congrats and good luck!

  Ask any actor and they’ll tell you. Drama is easy. Comedy is damned hard. The same is true for literature. For that reason, it’s ironic that the funny stuff gets so little respect. It takes more work and far more talent. Humor isn’t only about absurdity nor is it only about the expected versus the unexpected. It’s about timing and tension, and the precisely placed release of that tension. That’s something no one can explain, really. Either you have the knack, or you don’t. One can practice and hone one’s comedy skills, but the core instincts need to be there in the first place. Also, I feel that striking a balance between drama and comedy makes a story more powerful. You can stay on one side of the fence or the other, but what is really effective is a bit of both.

  That said, my favorite humorous Sci-fi/Fantasy author is Terry Pratchett. Douglas Adams is… well… okay, I guess. However, (for me) Terry Pratchett is far more powerful.* He uses comedy to make serious observations about the human condition. It isn’t humor for humor’s sake. He can make me laugh out loud, and he can make me cry in the same book, and I inevitably walk away feeling I’ve learned something. That takes skill. Pratchett doesn’t limit himself with situational comedy either. He plays with words in clever ways too. Another favorite of mine is Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand. The demon Bartimaeus acts as a young magician’s conscience. I love that bit of irony. I really do. Also, Bartimaeus’ voice is dead amazing. I’ve a thing for perfectly timed British humor, but then, I grew up on Monty Python and Terry Gilliam (who is an American, btw.) Terry Gilliam is definitely one of my favorite film-makers. Brazil is one of the funniest and yet single most depressing film ever made. (No, I’m not talking about the American ending. That’s a cheat.)

  Humor is complicated and miraculous and like ballet — it’s tougher than it looks, but that’s its beauty.

  ——————–

  * I’ve a theory that people tend to go with one camp or the other. Very few readers love both equally.

  Read More...

• Playing Against Expectations

  Humor in SF/F

  Today is The Whitefire Crossing‘s official release day – which means you can buy it for Kindle as well as (hopefully!) find it at your local bookstore – so forgive me if this post comes off a bit scatterbrained. (Hard to type while you’re bouncing off the walls!)

  So, right: humor. We always know funny when we see it, but boy is it hard to analyze. Doesn’t help that it might be THE most subjective category in fiction. Seems like if you poll a group of people on whether something’s funny, you’ll get a far greater variety of opinions (and more vehement ones, too) as opposed to, say, asking if an action scene is exciting or not. I haven’t figured out if that’s because people have narrower “sweet spots” for humor than they do for other emotional responses, or if it’s just that there’s such a broad range of what humans find funny that the overlap between individual people isn’t as large.

  It’s interesting, I can think of tons of movies and TV shows I’ve found hysterically funny, but not nearly so many books. I’d say that my sense of humor must be visual in nature, but when I think of funny movies, it’s not usually the visuals that get me (Top Secret and Emperor’s New Groove excepted), it’s the dialogue – I’m a huge fan of that particular style of satire and sarcasm perfected by the Brits. Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the 2nd and 3rd seasons of Black Adder, Shaun of the Dead…oh, yeah.

  Thinking of funny books (or rather, funny scenes in books), two examples sprang immediately to mind: (more…)

  Read More...

• Alex Bledsoe: My Favorite Science Fiction Joke

  Guest Post

  Alex Bledsoe is the author of five novels, including Dark Jenny and The Hum and the Shiver. A Tennessee native, he now lives in Wisconsin.
  

  I’m old enough to remember the literally grim state of science fiction before Star Wars. The books, movies and TV shows may have had their humorous moments (or more likely, moments that were intended to be humorous but actually fell flat: see the WWII-ish humor of Forbidden Planet), but pre-1977, humor and science fiction were considered contradictory. After all, the future would be a serious place.

  The problem is that humor goes to the core of humanity (and I mean “humanity” in the broad sense). SF always runs the danger of absurdity, and by acknowledging this with humor, you can get the reader/audience on your side. By pretending it isn’t goofy, you alienate them (see? I made a pun! “Alienate!”).

  My favorite joke in all of science fiction filmdom isn’t in Star Wars, or E.T., or any of the intentionally humorous SF films like Men in Black. It occurs in 1968′s Planet of the Apes, and is so audacious that it still astounds me that someone thought of it, actually filmed it, and allowed it to stay in the final film. (more…)

  Read More...