Posts Tagged "fantasy"

• What if all the male characters posed like the female one?

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.

  And so we come to gender roles in popular culture, about which many things could be said, but my housemate (a man) sent me the image below to get the ball rolling. I’ve seen a few variations of it kicking about the internet, but this one was especially pertinent given that it depicts comic book heroes.* And it does serve to highlight the general ridiculousness, and narrowness, of how women are portrayed in the media and popular culture.

  

  Gender roles is a topic that comes up over and over in conversation with friends, but it feels like it’s been more prevalent than ever in recent months (or perhaps that’s the influence of Caitlin Moran’s deeply excellent How To Be A Woman, a must-read for everyone, wherein she speaks upon Brazilians and the size of knickers amongst other things. In fact, if I could just quote from Caitlin Moran for the rest of this post, it would make life easier. She also makes me feel better about using copious quotas of exclamation marks).

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• Please send me a basket of kittens instead

  Horror: What Scares You?

  It appears we have reached the week where I have to fess up to being a complete wuss, because if there’s one thing I refuse to read or watch, it’s horror.

  I don’t know if I always used to be this bad, or if things stay with you longer as you get older, but I blame it on having a vivid imagination. No doubt this is a useful thing in many aspects of writing, but in this instance it does not serve me well. The moment you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes – the moment you start to empathize – that’s when the chill creeps in. That’s when you imagine the same thing happening to you, be it being stalked by a psychotic serial killer or an attack of surprisingly sized arachnids, and that’s when things start to linger. For the *insert-your-greatest-terror-here-please* is not content to rest within the pages of the book or the frame of the film – oh no. This is merely the beginning of its lifespan. After that, it will creep into the twilight hours and perch at the edge of your brain. It will loiter there for a while, testing, teasing. And finally, when you are on the verge of sleep, or have woken with that 4.48 psychosis, then the *insert-your-greatest-terror-here-please* chooses to spring, in all its full paranoia! It may disguise itself as the curtains, the shadow cast by the lamp, the dressing gown draped over the back of the door, the dust-chasings of the cat! However it chooses to manifest itself, you can be sure it’ll hang on for dear life. Say farewell to sleep. (more…)

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• It’s All About The Freedom, Baby!

  Why Write Fantasy?

  This week’s topic is; Why Write Fantasy?

  The answer is very simple. It’s all about Freedom! When one decides one is going to write fantasy, it is very liberating, because the writer is publicly throwing off the very last shackles that bind his so–called soul.

  I mean seriously, when one decides to become a writer, you are already severing all ties with workaday humanity. You are expecting, nay, demanding, that the cutters of wood and the drawers of water give you enough of their hard earned money that you can swan about cobbling together your little stories. James Branch Cabell once declared that a writer should learn all they could when they were young, but when they actually started to write, they should be a thing apart from humanity, so that they could follow the dictates of their inner voice without other people’s opinions messing it up.  Naturally, being James Branch Cabell, he used better words than that (Obviously, Jim wasn’t big on writer’s workshops).

  A writer is thus already something strange in the eyes of most people, and many of them become fabulous monsters. Oh, some of them try to maintain a facade of normality, (more…)

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• Fantasy? Fantastik!

  Why Write Fantasy?

  This week we’re discussing: why write fantasy? But perhaps the question should be, why not write fantasy? As a lover of the fantastic, I’ve never really understood the viewpoint ‘I don’t read fantasy or science fiction because it’s not real’. The subtext to this inevitably seems to be and therefore what’s the point? To which I would say: firstly, that’s the whole point! Fantasy is escapism! It’s an abundance of imagination and wonder in a few hundred pages and it’s also fun! Why would you not want to read fiction like that?

  And secondly I’d say: you’re right, it’s not real, at least not in the literal sense. But if you peer a little deeper into the mirror, reading fantastical fiction is often about reading between the lines as much as what’s offered up on the page.

  I’ve tried writing mainstream or contemporary fiction and it’s never quite clicked for me. I always want to go off at a tangent. I spent eighteen months living in Paris, and ever since leaving I’ve wanted to write about it, but I didn’t want to write exclusively about my experiences – I wanted to add another dimension. Something dreamy and fantastical. Something unexpected. (And I did actually draft that novel, but I guess it’s going to be sitting in a drawer for a while now.) I think this is why I love Murakami so much – you think you’re in an ordinary world, and suddenly you realize you’ve landed in a whole other dimension.

  I’m a reader and writer of fantastical fiction because it’s a joy to read and to write. Because it conjures other worlds. Because it places no limits on the imagination. Because it’s full of possibility. Because you can do anything and go anywhere with it. If everyone was confined to writing what they knew, fiction would be a much duller sphere. (more…)

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• With great power…

  Steampunk

  The last few days I’ve been pondering what I could write on this week’s theme of Steampunk, about which I know very little but would like to learn more. Fortunately, a brief dalliance with Google revealed I have read one book which at least part-qualifies, and even better, it’s one of my favourite books: NORTHERN LIGHTS by Philip Pullman (published as The Golden Compass in the US). So I’m going to write a bit about what I love about NORTHERN LIGHTS and what (I think) makes it Steampunk-esque. Less fortunate is the fact that I have lent my only copy of it to a friend who is now in Egypt. That’s my excuse for any mis-remembering, anyway…

  I read NORTHERN LIGHTS first as a teenager and have revisited it several times since. There are so many awesome things about Pullman’s trilogy, but what grabbed me about the first book was its world aesthetic. For a start, it has zeppelins, which are clearly the most excellent mode of transport ever invented, and I’m now feeling quite sad that one got cut from OSIRIS in the editing process (next book, next book…). There are strong elements of fantasy in Pullman’s work – witches who don’t feel the cold, armoured bears, animal daemons who express part of a human’s soul, and of course the alethiometer, a truth-reader which heroine Lyra must learn to decipher. But the alethiometer, whilst it is magical in concept, is in fact a scientific measuring device. And then we have theories of parallel worlds, which resonate with contemporary quantum physics theories. (more…)

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• Falling into science fiction

  Introductions

  I’m E J (Emma) Swift, author of OSIRIS, which is released June this year. It’s lovely to be here at the Bazaar! I’m particularly enamoured of the Bazaar theme. It’s the sort of thing you might stumble upon unexpectedly, not quite knowing what you might find, and that kind of encapsulates how I feel about the creative process of writing OSIRIS.

  It’s introductions week, so in the traditions of such things, a bit of background about me and how I got here: I’m an English writer, nowadays living in South London with two cats and a long-suffering housemate. My day job involves communications-type-things for performing arts training, and although the pointe shoes have long since been relegated to the back of the wardrobe, I’ve become obsessed with aerial circus skills. (That’s definitely a future novel. And yep, I have a lot of love for Angela Carter’s NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS.) As I’m sure is the case with many writers, my road to publication is littered with discarded novels, but at the end of last year I had my first sale, a story called THE COMPLEX, in UK magazine Interzone. And that was awesome. A week later I found out that Night Shade were interested in OSIRIS. And that was beyond awesome.

  Finding out that you’re going to be a professional writer is, whilst being the culmination of a lifetime of dreams, in equal measure terrifying. It’s no longer possible to simply fling the book out into the ether and hope for the best; the Internet is waiting, and it’s full of tigers. My immediate worry was: I don’t know enough. I don’t know enough and I haven’t read enough, or not the right things. But you can never read enough. The only way I’ve found to deal with that worry so far is by a) making decisions and b) trying to turn it into an opportunity. There are books and writers waiting to be discovered, recommendations to be made. That’s something to be excited about.

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• A glorious, nauseating journey of discovery

  Writing the Second Novel

  There are two ways to look at publishing your first novel.  My friend Mark Lawrence looks at it this way: you have already won the lottery. With so many good writers out there, and agents and publishing houses drowning in submissions, somehow you got your book noticed, and not only  noticed, but in print and on shelves. Everything else that happens after that is a gift. (He says this while simultaneously writing a best seller, designing a rocket ship, and saving his children from terrorists.)

  I take a more stressful view: this first book is a chance, a foot in the door, a job interview. After that, you could be a writer for real. You just have to learn to write for a deadline; suck creativity out of your overtired, depressed, distracted head; learn how to write a good sentence the first time instead of the fifth; be professional and adult when discussing your work (harder for me than I originally believed); and come up with a good idea more frequently than once every five years.

  Because Mark is right: the first book is a sign of incredible luck. But I think the second book (or trilogy, if you write SFF) is a sign that you are a writer. (more…)

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• Richard Hell and William Gibson: Any Connection?

  Sub genres, what do they mean (steam, cyber, bio, splatter)? 



  o hold the t.v. to my lips, the air so packed with cash
  then carry it up flights of stairs and drop it in the vacant lot
  To lose my train of thought and fall into your arms’ tracks
  and watch beneath the eyelids every passing dot

  I belong to the blank generation . . .

  –Richard Hell and the Voidoids

  When I learned I was to write a blog post about all the –punk genres (cyber, steam, bio, splatter), I panicked.  Here, I am entirely ignorant. But I do know about punk music, so my mind turned there instead. Why is the word ‘punk’ attached to these genres?

  First I must address the question of whether or not the ‘punk’ of steampunk actually has anything to do with the music. I’ve seen arguments that it doesn’t—that punk is a much older word. No argument that it’s a much older word: I remember my dad being dismayed that punk music was called ‘punk music’ because of what ‘punk’ had meant to him in the Navy. But truly I think arguments that ‘punk’ is referring to something pre-1970s are reaching a bit too far. The term ‘cyberpunk’ was coined in 1983, a mere decade or so after the advent of Television, The Stooges, and the Ramones, an earthquake in terms of contemporary culture. I think the term was meant to build upon that, both for shock value and for aligning itself with punk values. (more…)

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• All about cons from someone who hasn’t been there

  Conventions and Conferences

  Ah, conventions. They sound like such fun. Great costumes, parties, roleplaying games with everyone’s favorite authors—who wouldn’t want to go? Well, a shy person like myself. The best thing about being an international person of mystery is that nobody knows who I am. No phone calls, no author readings, no book signings: so far I have loved it. But I also know that the writing community is just that – a community – and that one day I will join it in person.

  Even so, I imagine my first venture into conventions this way: I will attend a few panels (“Chronological Dissonance: Modern Archetypes & Morals in a Historical Setting” and “Science Fiction & Religion: How Readers and Writers Mix the Two”—both from past cons—are what I imagine), then run off to a museum by myself or else hole up in my room, writing. (more…)

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• Of gods and flying

  From airships to jet packs--The best flying machines.

  When Daedalus fashioned wings for himself and his son Icarus, he knew the danger. He warned his son to fly neither too high nor too low. Too high, and one is too near to the gods; too low, and one is pulled down by earthly needs and desires.  Icarus of course flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that held his feathers together, and he drowned in the sea.

  Daedalus gave his warning, but we human beings have never heeded it. The ages are filled with inventors who attached wings and leaped from tall buildings, usually breaking bones, until at last they turned to gliding. Gliding was the key to achieving the impossible: with lift, we can now fly halfway across the world in less than a day. Next we discovered rocket power and flew to the moon. Not shabby, but also not enough. We don’t want to depend on a metal tube or a capsule. As fantasy readers we want to feel the air brush against our skin, the clouds dampening our cheeks.

  Let us not forget why Daedalus fashioned those wings: he could not leave Crete by either land or sea. In all human ways he was trapped. He needed wings – he needed to pass between the immortal and the mortal realms, between sun and earth. Too high, and the wax would melt; too low, and the feathers would become weighted with water. A fine balance, and his son could not maintain it. (more…)

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