Genre accessibility rears its head again

I've recently started watching the TV show Community. It's great. You should watch it too. Not so long ago, though, it appeared to be in danger of cancellation.  A friend pointed out this article in The Atlantic Wire, which discussed a few of the reasons the show might have found itself in this position. The first item on their list was that it is so tightly wound around itself and its geeky subculture that it is difficult for a new viewer to penetrate. "No welcome mat," they said.

That's probably a fair comment. But the clever knottiness is what makes the show so great. If you take that away, you're not going to be left with the same show. So what's the right thing to do? Stick with the vision and risk cancellation, or try to make it more approachable and risk losing the thing that makes it so great?

My answer? Stick with it. If Community gets cancelled, at least it will have been great -- and its own thing -- to the end.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. That's basically the same criticism that is often levelled at science fiction (frequently by insiders): that it has become so deeply wrapped up in itself that it is essentially inaccessible to the new reader. I've mentioned before that this sometimes worries me.

Thinking about Community has got me looking at the problem slightly differently, though. Of course I want science fiction literature to thrive, and I'd love it if everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. But, to take an example, The Quantum Thief just wouldn't be the same book if Hannu Rajaniemi had attempted to make it approachable for everyone, regardless of their familiarity with the genre. And that, I think, would have been a shame.

I'm certainly not suggesting that science fiction authors should give up on trying to engage with the outside, and just turn inward. Engagement is obviously necessary to keep the genre lively, and hopefully at least a little relevant. And, yes, perhaps it's also necessary to provide a new generation of readers with the background they need to really enjoy books like The Quantum Thief (although I'm uncomfortable with with slightly elitist tone in that last sentence). I think all I'm saying is that lack of accessibility to a wide audience is not necessarily a flaw.

Still, it does make me sad that I won't ever be able to share The Quantum Thief (and books like it) with the vast majority of my friends.

Best books I read this year

It really is tough finding time to do anything productive in December, isn't it? The SSWriMo debrief that I promised is coming -- I have re-read two of the three stories I wrote during November, and the good news is they're not as bad as I feared they might be. I'm plugging away at some edits to the first one, "Beacons". I don't think it will be long before I'm ready to unleash it on anyone who will promise to read it and give me feedback.

For now, I thought I'd give you my picks for best books that I read this year. It was a good year all round -- I read lots of stuff, and lots of it was good.

Science Fiction: The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

I've already spoken at length about this one, so I won't go on about it too much again. I'm not sure if it was actually the best SF book I read this year, but it was certainly the one I had the most fun reading. It was full of the sorts of things I like in my science fiction. I'm excited for more novels from Rajaniemi.

Honourable mentions: The City & the City, by China Mieville, and The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. Both deserving Hugo Award winners this year.

Fantasy: Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer 

This one is about a detective called Finch, living in the conquered city of Ambergris. The city is falling apart, infested by the fungal technology of its conquerors, the equally-fungal gray caps. Finch, who is technically a gray cap collaborator, is called in to investigate the unusual murders of one of the invaders and a human man. Things spin wildly out of control from there.

This book just drips with atmosphere. It is beautifully written, almost post-apocalyptic. Grim, but really compelling. It reminded me a little of Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. If the New Weird exists as a genre, Finch certainly sits well within it.

Honourable mentions: Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder, and Kraken, by China Mieville. I expect to see Kraken do very well at next year's Hugo Awards.

Literary Fiction: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer 

Typically I steer well clear of 9/11 fiction. I only read this one because I joined a book club, and I'm glad that I did. It's about a young Jewish kid called Oskar trying to deal with the death of his father in the World Trade Center attacks. Oskar finds a key in his dad's stuff, and sets about trying to methodically work out which lock in New York it opens. Scattered throughout Oskar's story is the story of his grandparents, both Holocaust survivors.

I doubt I can really explain how lovely this book is. It's sad, and charming, and hopeful, and I think you should read it right now.

Honourable mention: Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. One of those few cases where the film adaptation actually does the book justice.

What did you read this year that you really enjoyed?

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

I wanted to talk about Hannu Rajaniemi's first novel, The Quantum Thief, because I think it is the kind of science fiction that I'd like to write.

This isn't a review, but I feel like I should say a few words about the plot. The book is about the master thief Jean le Flambeur. In the opening chapter, he is sprung from prison (a prison of the mind, where he plays out the Prisoner's Dilemma endlessly, against himself) by Mieli, a woman from the close-knit communities of the Oort Cloud, and her ship Perhonen. They need le Flambeur to steal something, but in order to do so he first needs to retrieve his old personality and memories. He hid them, even from himself, on the moving Martian city of the Oubliette, where personal information is tightly controlled and the seconds in your life are a commodity. Of course, once le Flambeur arrives, the great young detective Isidore is immediately on his tail.

So what do I like so much about it? I'm just going to say straight off that Rajaniemi has, I think, a very literary writing style for a science fiction author. His prose feels pretty sparse, but in a way that is quite pleasant to read. I think that's something I'm unlikely to be able to emulate, though. I tend to be wordy.

The book is really about exploring possible societal responses to things like immortality, and the digitisation of the human mind. Transhumanism, I guess. Mostly this is done through the lens of the Oubliette, where society has chosen one set of rules to deal with these issues. There are plenty of hints to other cultures and their responses to the same questions, though, generally as they come into conflict with the Oubliette and the characters trying to solve a mystery within it.

The real treat, though, is that those questions are explored pretty much entirely through the characters. Mieli is an outsider in the Oubliette, confused by its social norms. Isidore is very much part of the system. And le Flambeur is caught between the two, trying to work out how he used the Oubliette's social system to hide from everyone, himself included. It never feels like Rajaniemi is lecturing us about the ideas he's interested in; they're just explored naturally as the plot unfolds. 

That's a neat trick -- I think all science fiction writers aspire to it, but often with limited success. I'm not sure exactly how Rajaniemi does it. Lots of detailed world-building, probably. He's clearly got a knack for thinking through plausible responses to his world-building, too. It's too common, in my opinion, for a piece of technology or an idea in a science fiction story to leave society essentially unchanged.

Rajaniemi has clearly thought long and hard about what it means if your mind and personality, as well as everything you see and hear, can be hacked, uploaded, backed-up, transferred, pirated, and all those things we can do with data. That's cool. He's also come up with a fast-paced, exciting plot that keeps the pages turning. Just because you're exploring ideas doesn't mean you can't blow a few things up along the way.

It's not perfect, though. There are a couple of pitfalls I'd like to avoid (although if Rajaniemi can't, there's probably no hope for me!). The first is that the book is very demanding. Science fiction tends to have a pretty steep learning curve; it can take a while to have any clear idea what's going on. This is especially true in The Quantum Thief. Rajaniemi didn't shy away from using new words to describe new concepts, and while it generally added to the feel of the book, it did make it quite dense. A glossary would have helped, and none was present. Really, though, I'm not sure if you haven't already failed if a glossary is necessary.

There are also interludes scattered throughout the book whose reason for being there took a long time to reveal itself. A less patient reader might have been turned off by these bits. Then again, a more attentive reader than I might have worked out why they were there much sooner.

Rajaniemi also played a game with perspective which I found a bit jarring. le Flambeur's parts are told in first person, everybody else's in third person. I'm not really sure why he did that. No doubt there's a clever reason, but it's buried too deep for me, and it just sort of got on my nerves.

The book also suffers a little, in my opinion, from first-book-of-a-series syndrome. While the central plot (retrieving le Flambeur's personality) is wrapped up by the end of the book, very satisfactorily, there is an epilogue that clearly sets the scene for the next novel. I really do prefer the Alastair Reynolds/China Mieville method for writing a novel series: same setting, different plot and characters.

Woah, this got long. And I feel like I just scratched the surface. Suffice it to say, I thought The Quantum Thief was an amazing book, and I know it's one I'll be coming back to again. If anyone out there has read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Rajaniemi did well, and what (if anything!) you didn't like so much.