The Stumbling Block

Context: I was reading a story I thought was great, then felt it starting to stumble, and just reached the part where I would get out my form letter to say "I regret to say..."

Iron Tengu, Bamboo Girl (a brief history of Japanese SF 1/3)

These days, no-one really questions Japanese influence on modern science fiction – from the dark Orientalist fantasies of Japanese corporatism as a symbol of oppression in cyberpunk near futures, through Japanese industry’s place as a signal for “high tech”[1], and on through the ongoing anime and manga boom Japan seems almost omnipresent in modern science fiction.

Strangely though, despite Japan’s place as almost symbolic of near-future technological wonders[2] Japan’s own rich SF history is very little known in the English-speaking world. Oh, most people who grew up with TV in the 80s and 90s have some inkling of what was going on, but apart from kids’ cartoons and some thinly veiled adaptations of Western classics[3] the view from the West would largely make it seem as though the history of Japanese SF is short and reactive.

This is a shame, as Japan’s unique domestic SF culture has deep roots of its own.

Write Short, Write Fast, Write Often

Original images by Sebastien D'ARCO, animation by Koba-chan CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1044915

I really think short stories are a neglected form in genre fiction.

There's a real pressure to write long because it seems like the only way to get into print for a lot of people - at least, to get into print in what feels like a meaningful way. But the bar to getting a novel out the door is much higher than for a short.

Campbell vs Wollheim

Jacopo Zucci's "The Golden Age" (1575)

I recently returned to Robert Silverberg's essay on the "Golden Age" of SF.

It's interesting how Silverberg characterises Campbell's influence, especially how it contrasts with Wollheim's opinion. I think, though, that they're really on the same page:

I think to start with what Campbell was looking for was something along the lines of Gernsback's "SciEng Evangelism" but with the kind of near-slick writing you could find in Merritt and Moore and other greats of the 30s (taking into account that Moore was still going strong in the 40s and on into the 50s - I'm not sure why she doesn't merit a mention here, but suspect it's because Silverberg is focusing on SCI-fi, and over the years she has been classified strongly as fantasy)

But it grows evident in the later years of the 50s and on into the 60s that he was curating Astounding/Analog with a heavy hand. Even some of his "golden boys" occasionally griped that Campbell was giving them marching orders or entirely rewriting stories. And with the end of the hot part of WW2 and the opening of the cold front with the USSR, the 50s was also kind of a "golden age" of prophesies of doom - it seems inevitable that "cold hard logic" applied to predictive SF would generate an unhealthy serving of that tone.

The key is to note which of the Campbell crew were also getting accolades from Wollheim: Heinlein in particular gets comment for his upbeat, optimistic visions of interplanetary civilization.

So yeah, the 50s is a Golden Age, but I think it's also the period in which SF began to diverge into what Wollheim called the Welles vs Verne branches - enthusiastic utopianism vs scientism. This right after SFF - the larger category - had begun to diverge (partly because of the Campbell/neoFuturian movement) into clearer fantasy and "scientifiction" streams.

Who needs another hero?

Heroes. Who needs them!

Just another holier-than-thou vehicle for someone’s personal hangups.

Just another over-inflated cardboard cutout, a power fantasy made flesh.

Too strong, too competent, too perfect.

Real life isn’t like that.

Real people aren’t heroes.

And heroes have no place in serious fiction for mature adults.

Right?

Wrong.

Fat Cats and Hippies

Frank Zappa gave the interview this clip is from to MTV's "The Cutting Edge" in 1987. In this section he outlines a problem he saw with the music industry of the 80s - a problem he saw developing years earlier.

I hope you'll listen to the interview - it's just 4 minutes long. But for the moment here's the issue in a nutshell, and in Zappa's own words:

FLASH!

(click to get a readably-big image)

How small can we go with SFF? No, how small really?

I love short-shorts - make no mistake, I also love the deeply-rooted, sprawling masterpieces of the classic epics.

But I love short-shorts - or flash fiction as the modern lexicon tags them. In fact, one of the first reading projects I set myself when I reached the point in my study of Japanese that regular reading was required to progress any further was to explore the work of Hoshi Shinichi, a science fiction author famed for his mastery of the short-short format.

The short short story format takes you to a world and gives you the penny tour through the eyes of the protagonist. It leaves enormous vistas open to the imagination and puts your mind into overdrive. It's like a carefully selected aperitif - just a taste, really, and maybe an incredible contrast to the main course, but perfectly formulated to make your stomach growl and your mouth water.

But (contrary to a recent call for submissions that suggested you could write a 1500 word story in an hour (but maybe take an extra hour to edit it)) the short-short is very challenging to do well. After all, you have only one or two thousand words in which to provide the reader with an engaging situation, a believable context, and most importantly a relatable hero. 

Can it really be done? Can you really pack all three of these things onto a single sheet of paper?

My answer: Not only yes, but hell yes.