Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

So earlier I had a conversation in comments with afearfulthing that got me thinking; the context was of reading only fic, blogrolls, and recs. In short, the selective reading of only trusted sources etc. There's nothing unusual in that, per se, except the reflection/self-consciousness of choosing to read from a body of free, communal, and public work versus industrial/pop culture production. I think that self-conscious choice is the key part, here, because it implies not only active choice in selection but also active selection.

A project I'd love to pick up one day is the history of women's private reading. Reading is of course both fascinating and difficult because it is in many ways invisible: How do you know who read what? And what she thought of it? There's a rabbit-hole of locating information from marginalia, from bookplates, from notes and diaries, from eyewitness discussions of women in line at bookstores, etc. etc. There's the story about Anne Boleyn's Bible: how she made marks in it with her fingernail: this visceral, bodily connection with a text that is still almost literally invisible.

A lot has been done on women's reactionary writing--especially in fandom, where fanworks are operators of critique and in some ways recovery: bids to "rescue" characters we love. But I'm not sure much has been done on reactionary reading--I'm writing this freeform without having done any research.

I'll use my own experience to talk about this a bit: I often find a lot more reading material of interest to me in fandom than in traditional publishing. Part of this is an access issue: what I want is a really good story with x, y, z. In a brick and mortar store or a library, you can ask clerks for recs, or see what they are promoting at the moment; but these depend on that individual person, and--sometimes--the necessity of building a relationship with them. In an online bookstore, you can run a search and sort by popularity, but this is limited by the interface's algorithms and the site's own audience. You go to a fansite, or AO3, search by tags and recs, and boom--you're done. Because you're automatically in a community of the likeminded. Going back further, you end up with similar situations in print zines, because the zines were community-based--if you were in that community, you would probably already like its content.

I imagine the closest analog to this community appeal in traditional publishing is how some companies--and I'm think specifically of Marvel and Harlequin here--build their lines for specific demographic audiences. Both companies literally have dozens of titles and each of them is for a specific audience: older readers, younger readers, African-American readers, queer readers, etc. I'm curious if anyone can think of other companies that do this?

I'm also thinking of the ongoing schisms in fandom right now, particularly on the topics of race. Check out N.K. Jemisen's GOH Wiscon Speech for more, but here's a key bit:

Maybe you think I’m using hyperbole here, when I describe the bigotry of the SFF genres as “violence”. Maybe I am using hyperbole — but I don’t know what else to call it. SFF are dedicated to the exploration of the future and myth and history. Dreams, if you want to frame it that way. Yet the enforced SWM dominance of these genres means that the dreams of whole groups of people have been obliterated from the Zeitgeist. And it’s not as if those dreams don’t exist. They’re out there, in spades; everyone who dreams is capable of participating in these genres. But many have been forcibly barred from entry, tormented and reeducated until they serve the status quo. Their interests have been confined within creative ghettos, allowed out only in proscribed circumstances and limited numbers. When they do appear, they are expected to show their pass and wear their badge: “Look, this is an anthology of NATIVE AMERICAN ANCIENT WISDOM from back when they existed! Put a kachina on the cover or it can’t be published. No, no, don’t put an actual Navajo on the cover, what, are you crazy? We want the book to sell. That person looks too white, anyway, are you sure they aren’t lying about being an Indian? What the hell is a Diné? What do you mean you’re Inuit?”

But the violence that has been done is more than metaphysical or thematic. Careers have been strangled at birth. Identities have been raped — and I use that word intentionally, not metaphorically. What else to call it when a fan’s real name is stripped of its pseudonym, her life probed for data and details until she gets phone calls at her home and workplace threatening her career, her body, and her family? (I don’t even need to name a specific example of this; it’s happened too often, to too many people.) Whole subgenres like magic realism and YA have been racially and sexually profiled, with discrimination based on that profiling so normalized as to be nearly invisible. How many of you have heard that epic fantasy or video games set in medieval Europe need not include people of color because there weren’t any? I love the Medieval PoC blog for introducing simple visual evidence of how people like me were systematically and literally excised from history. The result is a fantasy readership that will defend to the death the idea that dragons belong and Those People don’t.

An ugly truth in publishing is systematic erasure of choice--just check out what's going on with Amazon right now.

[Direct linking because the embedding code just isn't working: http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/t1nxwu/amazon-vs--hachette---sherman-alexie]

The commentary on first-time writers and publications is as fascinating as it saddening and disgusting.

As such, we as readers (and writers) are left to make our own alternatives where possible--and then we see this co-opted as well in terms of the major publishers that give mega-contracts to fanfic authors with proven track records (most recently, literally two days ago, a 1D fan bags a mid-six figure deal for her fan novel), and Amazon's own Kindle Worlds.

This cycle of production and consumption is fascinating--I have a whole 'nother piece I want to do on historical disruptions in terms of women's writing and reception--but what we see here is how publishers are taking advantage of alternative communities and trying to use them for more profit.

So I spent last week at the Popular Culture Association's National Meeting, which is always basically like nerdy braingasms. I gave a paper on Pacific Rim, spoke on a roundtable about Tolkien and derivative works, and ran a panel and roundtable on vampire literature. I also sat in on papers on comics, audience reception, adapting Sherlock, and a bunch of other things, and had some really great conversations, and then on the plane started sort of writing the following in my head:

Okay, so one of the ways to look at book history is how production and readership ties in with class: Today we refer to this (rather obliquely) as highbrow (Shakespeare), middlebrow (Tolkien), and lowbrow (comics? WWE?) culture. Now, what sort of came up in conversation at lunch one day, as happens, was the discussion of fandom as middle class activity. We like to think of the internet as freely available, but let's face it, it requires a computer and a connection, and any fanworks require software for images and wordprocessing. They also require time. This can also be tied into the assumption that fanworks are all by (middle class) teenage girls, because who has more leisure time for fan creation and media consumption, etc. etc.

Then you backtrack to the days of zines etc. You could obtain fic by either sending through the mail through ads in magazines (somewhere I have a 70s Star Trek mag that has one of those ads in the back for zines, with that old "- /" coding to denote whether it was gen or slash material) or by attending cons and acquiring them in the dealer's rooms (note: I know cons today often have a discounted charge if you want to go to the dealer's room and not the whole con--anyone know how far back that goes, or was it always the case?). So it would have been possible to have gone to buy zines but not shell out for actor photos and whatnot; not sure how many would have done that, but it would have been *possible*, I think.

But then in terms of actual zine production, back to the 1930s, there would still have been costs for paper, mimeo equipment, etc. etc. One of the fun things in my private collection is a short pamphlet by Don Wollheim from around ~39-40 where he is arguing against the US going to war because of the effect that will have on fan/SF culture: paper prices will go up and so will the cost of the magazines AND the fan pubs. (There's a paper in that, sometime.)

So backtracking even more, I'm thinking of Wilkie Collins's essay on the "Unknown Public" that was thousands of women buying books and serials back in the 1800s; his argument, as I recall, was about how they were buying all this lowbrow dreck (of course) and that someone (he) should *really* be teaching them to read properly. (Another note, there's been this preoccupation with "reading properly" back to the 16th and 17th c., and that too is tied in with class and also gender lines. Basically, men worrying about what women were reading goes way the hell back.)

Richard Altick in The English Common Reader actually did a fair bit with crunching numbers on publications and readers and such. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or not that he got kicked off my prelims list cos now I want to go back and look at it, though of course I need to focus on the books I already have. Altick was fairly seminal in shifting the discipline of book history from "how books were produced" to "who was reading them."

Anyway, fan histories/criticism tend to be written to focus on ethnography ("lookit what these people are doing! who are they?"), sociology ("look! it's women! *why* are they doing it??), and only now (like, literally, less than ten years) into literary critique ("this fan novel does x, y, and z."). I'm thinking if you apply book history practices to fandom, how we'll reveal things at a new slant: Not *why* women read and write slash, say, but what fans are really doing with their cultural preoccupations and so forth.

This can also be tied into romance studies, in a way. (Also, at PCA, I kind of wish I cared more about romances because what panels and scholars I have dipped into always seem to be consistently deep and well thought out. This year I attended a panel on gay romances and there were a couple of papers that were just really great histories of the emergence of those genres and how they were coded back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and it was *fascinating.*) Janice Radway's Reading the Romance basically focuses on the issues of women readers and writers, the patriarchy, and the middlebrow. Since a lot of fanworks are romances and erotica, a lot of this criticism and scholarship also applies. For instance, she has an essay about the supposition that romances are primarily lowbrow reading, except, of course, in terms of consumption and leisure time, a lot of romance readers are also middle class women.

Anyways, these are just so preliminary thoughts. So.

I meant to do it over the weekend but forgot. My bad.

Also I hear tell there's going to be a fan version of the poll/list, and anticipate many more fun books, and gods willing, less DWGs.

Now then. Meme!

NPR conducted a poll to determine the top 100 SF/Fantasy novels of all time according to participants.

Bold for read
Italics for intending to read
Underline for partial read series/books
Strikethrough for never ever reading


1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Fuck yeah.)

( Read more... )

So I got an unexpected get out of jail free card and have been enjoying it.


Varamathras looks like I feel.

Scott called this morning from the Barnes and Nobles in Atlanta. We've been working our way through io9's 14 Best Speculative Fiction Books of 2010. He finished The Wind-Up Girl which I'm still stuck on--I like the chapters with Emiko but I loathe everyone else. Grr.

Anyway he was calling cos B&N had like none of the other books and he was about to give up and go to Amazon. He did pause to ask if I wanted to read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian with him.

Me (reading from web review): "If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power." Llama, this sounds horrible!!!
Scott: Yeaaaaaaah... that was a bad choice wasn't it?
Me (laughing): YES! This is a HORRIBLE choice!
Scott (sheepish): Yeaaaaaah. Okay I'll get this for me and then see if they have How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe.
Me: Yes please!!!

~

Saw this NYT article about some coffeehouses banning ereaders and found it deeply amusing. I know I'm really in the minority but I do LIKE ereaders: I like that I can carry a bunch of books with me very easily. I don't like that I can't mark them up, deface or improve the text, or a dozen or more years from now look on one fondly because it holds special memories (like the copy of A Moveable Feast I took to Paris, or the copy of Inglorious I read in Japan while contemplating marriage to Scott), but that's why it's possible to have BOTH things.

(And I've said this before and will say it again: I would totally have my iPad's babies if I could. So there.)

~

I crossed the 10k line in my novel. I know it's a drop in the bucket/average size of a Trek story, but it's still something all my own and I feel proud. I've created a file that's a sort of appendices as I work out additional things. Most recently I've been trying to figure out the religion of the people on the planet of Uir. (See, it has a name now. Well that's what the inhabitants call it, not sure what the Terrans call it yet...) Since I'm talking about a half dozen countries on the main continent, I'm thinking there's got to be at least three biggies. Now how do they all interact???

Working, working...

A couple of my friends suggested I try some soy milk to see how I handle it as I seem to be getting lactose-intolerant in my old age. So I bought some and drank a cup an hour or so ago and I feel pretty good actually. Although I gotta ask, is it supposed to look sort of tan? Cos that kinda freaks me out.

~

Spent most of today cleaning: the house looks kinda better. The movers are coming for Scott's stuff on Wednesday, and after that I'm going to re-do the guest room as a sort of study.

Anyhow, this is the first weekend I've had in ages to sort of decompress. I say 'sort of' because I've basically spent the past year in hyper-ahhhhhhhhhh! mode and now I'm actually sort of in a good place with a lot of things. But at the same time I'm also sort of counting to when I can go visit Scott. So it's all sort of odd and I'm way restless and even more ADD than usual.

~

Went to see Eclipse yesterday. Scott went at the same time so we can have sort of virtual dates. I enjoyed the film but not as much as the other two. But hella props to Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter, for continuing to infuse Bella with feminism and 5x the grrlpwr! of the series' Mary Sue-ish non-entity.

Scott and I are also going to start reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians together this week. Here we go with an attempt at respectable literature!

So I love pulp art. The more psychedelic, skanky, and weird, the better. So I was inordinately pleased to find Gay on the Range an online archive of gay pulp covers from the 1950s and 1960s. They have a lovely literal sister site, Strange Sisters that's a lesbian pulp archive.

Challenge: Which books are you dying to read now?

So Harper's has put its entire historical archive online and you can access it for free if you have a subscription. I frankly think this is nothing short of fucking phenomenol and am looking forward to browsing. Tee hee.

PS The "The God of the Desert: Jreusalem and the Ecology of Monotheism" essay in the new January issue is a fascinating read.

The WSJ *coff* weighs in on the Golden Compass controversy:

So is the ferment about "His Dark Materials" just Harry Potter vs. Fundamentalists redux, a clash that generates heat but no light? Probably not.

First of all, "His Dark Materials," unlike the Harry Potter series, is real literature and, as such, deserves serious attention. Mr. Pullman, a graduate of Oxford University with a degree in English, knows his stuff. The books are loaded with allusions to Greek mythology and philosophy, Milton, Blake and the Bible, with images ranging from the obvious (the Garden of Eden) to the obscure (the bene elim, or angelic Watchers mentioned in Genesis 6:1-4). These allusions, unlike the throwaway Latinisms of Hogwarts' spells, drive the plot, characters and themes of Mr. Pullman's series. Indeed, a child who investigates them would begin to gain the rudiments of a classical education.

I think this is an interesting argument, if only for the dismissive snobbery inherent in the system: if it refers to other great works, clearly it is also a great work. But it ignores (pointedly, I should think), all the references of the HP series.

Because, seriously, if you didn't pick them up, particularly in Book 7, then you *really* don't have a case in talking about classical rudiments, I'm just sayin'.

But then:

Mr. Pullman insists, as Dan Brown did regarding his novel "The Da Vinci Code," that he is only telling a story. Yet surely he, like his character Lyra, knows that a story is one of the most important things there is. In a climactic scene in the third book, Lyra comes to grief when she spins a fantastic tale to a mythological creature called a harpy who is guarding the underworld. " 'Liar! Liar! Liar!' " it screams, "so that Lyra and liar were one and the same thing." When Lyra tells the harpy another story, a true one, it responds quite differently. Why? "Because it was true," says the harpy. "Because it was nourishing. Because it was feeding us."

Dan Brown? They brought in Dan frigging Brown?!

Pardon me while I have an aneurism.

Okay, back to the issue at hand. I know looking for logic and sense in the WSJ is begging for its own particular brand of madness, but I find the whole article to be deeply peculiar. To the point that I have sat here quite a while typing in circles and have just come to the conclusion that I give up.

So I ask you all: What constitutes literature in this day and age?

Farhad Manjoo gets around to reviewing Kindle over at The Machinist. More useful is the commentary in the letters section where people discuss the virtues of the Sony Reader (you can download from Project Gutenberg!) and the price of books anyway. There's also a random posting from someone claiming to be a librarian pointing out all the free books you can get at your local library. Yes, dear, but you have to give them back at some point. And not write in them!

Also, Farhad? Buying 40 books over a five year period does not constitute being a book fanatic. That's about eight books a year--or basically, a good stop at B&N before summer vacation. Really.

So I'm reading the NEA "To Read or Not To Read" report. Here are some thoughts:

*I wish they would define reading material as used in this study. There's a disclaimer saying that, "Finally, except
where book reading or literary reading rates are specifically mentioned, all references
to voluntary reading are intended to cover all types of reading materials." (p.22) But
let's face it, there's lots of other serious reading cultural discourse (comics, manga, magazines, blogs, etc) that's going on nowadays. I know from experience that a number of kids don't consider comics or manga "reading" because their teachers (or possibly bad librarians) told them it wasn't.

They make a similar disclaimer for the discussion of the 2004 "Reading at Risk" report, where this time they clarify that yes "online reading" is counted (p.24). But does that hold for the newer report?

I also wish they would focus more on testing abilities of comprehension (as in "reading comprehension levels have dropped X% since 2004"): what does that mean? Are there any questions focusing on critical efforts?

E.g. You hand a kid a piece of paper that says "The dog is brown." Do you then ask the kid "What color is the dog?" or do you ask "What kind of dog do you think it is and why?" Yes I'm making this overly simple but honestly it's the best I can come up with at 1am. And I still wanna know.

*Correlation between readers and civic leaders.
18- to 34-year-olds, whose reading rates are the lowest for any adult
under 65, show declines in cultural and civic participation. [...] Literary readers are more than twice as likely as non-readers to volunteer or do charity work. (p. 18).
I have a quibble with this: Ours is the most debt-ridden, overworked and underpaid generation in American history. Most people my age are saddled with serious debts from education and are faced with an ever crapping economy that largely means working multiple jobs for little pay and less benefits. You know what happens if you leave for work at 7am and come home around 7pm (and you're lucky enough to not have another job to go to or children to rear): you generally have a few hours of chores and maybe two hours for entertainment of any kind. Social revolutions are not made of this lifestyle.

[Related political snap: 84% of Proficient readers voted in the 2000 presidential election, compared with 53% of Below-Basic readers. (p.19) Yes, and we all voted for Al Gore.)

*Define "literature" and "literary reading" for gods' sake, particularly as used on p.23. I read a helluva lot of books, and I have no clue how many any of them people would consider "literary."

*Random: what's with the photo spread of the hot white male reading on page 26?

*Second random: What is with the questions about "reading for fun for five minutes" or "reading for fun for 30 minutes?" (currently p.31 but repeated multiple times throughout) Who blocks their time like that aside possibly William Gladstone, RIP?

*Why is reading seen as more pointedly virtuous than watching TV? Note language bias:
Although all age groups read far less than they watch TV, we may take heart
that 15- to 24-year-olds spend a lower percentage of their leisure time, relative to
other age groups, on TV-watching. (p.38) Note also obligatory Neil Postman quote on page 41.

*Ambiguous question on page 45: “Have you read any books in the past year or haven’t you
had the chance to read a book in the past year?” With a 73% result. I'm not sure how to answer that myself...

*Discussion of book purchasing pp. 46-51. They discuss the average amount people spend on books and adjust it for inflation, but they don't discuss the likewise inflated cost of books themselves. (The biggest seller this summer hand's down was a kid's book. The average price for $19.99. If you didn't go to a megastore you probably bought it for closer to $35. And you all know which book I'm talking about too.)

*Obligatory ode to the seeming death of the newspaper pp.52-53. See elsewhere in this blog for my rants on that issue.

*Random photo spread of hot minority female p.54.

*Obligatory gender gap notation p.62 and 65-66.

*Photo spread of puzzled-seeming non-hottie in work environment, p.76.

*Emphatic disappointment that in the global scheme, American scores are only average: p.85. In a range of Finland being #1 and Mexico #26, the US is only #15. No noted correlation between reading level and patriotism, which somehow disappoints me.

*Gratuitous Robert Frost quote p.86. (Sorry, I can't stand Frost.)

*Fascinating Current Events Information table on p.89 that strongly implies that proficient readers are more likely to go to the internet than newspapers.

*C.S. Lewis quote on p.90 that made nice counterbalance to John Henry Newman quote on p.33 and Virginia Woolf quote on p.95. What's with all the dead white folk??

More later.