The problem with lists is...

A few posts ago I mentioned a new column by John DeNardo over on the Kirkus blog: How to Start Reading Science Fiction. This is a topic that interests me, since I sometimes worry that modern SF is essentially impenetrable to a new reader. Part two of the column has been posted, and it is a list of 10 Accessible Science Fiction Books.

I'm a little reluctant to dive in and start criticising. Obviously I was never going to agree with everything on the list. That's the nature of lists, and it seems to be the nature of the internet that an awful lot of it is full of people arguing about lists. 

But I am a little disappointed by DeNardo's choices. Unfortunately, it's because I've only read two of them. I was kind of hoping that I'd be familiar with more of the list, so I could try to judge whether or not I thought it was indeed full of genuinely accessible SF books (and, honestly, what exactly that means).

The two books that I have read are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Ender's Game absolutely deserves to be on that list, in my opinion. Not only is it a great book, but I think it's very accessible. Particularly to young readers. It's one of the few Hugo Award-winning novels I can name where I know a bunch of non-SF readers who have read it, and enjoyed it.

I'm somewhat more sceptical of The Road appearing on that list. Not because it isn't a great book -- it is a great book, and you should all rush out and read it right now. I also think that it absolutely qualifies as a science fiction novel, although that's not where you'll find it in the book store. My concern is that I'm not sure it is representative. If I gave a new SF reader The Road and they loved it, I have no idea what I would recommend next. Would they ever read another SF novel like it?

I'm not sure if this is just me being down on the quality of most SF writing. Maybe I am. Or maybe I'm guilty of elevating The Road above genre fiction just because it comes from the literary fiction section of the book store. But that is almost certainly a topic for another blog post. One I may never write.

On the plus side, at least now I've got a few more books to add to my reading list!

Elizabeth Bear stole my idea

This is one of those cases where I think I finally really understand something that I've known intellectually for a long time.

A while back, I had the kernel of an idea for a story (or perhaps a game). I'm not sure where the idea came from. It was about a generation ship which had undergone some calamity on the long voyage to a new star. Knowledge was lost, either due to damage or the passage of a large amount of time, so that perhaps the original purpose of the mission had passed into myth. I hadn't got very far, but possibly the story would be about the people trying to rediscover, and perhaps resurrect, that mission.

Then I read Elizabeth Bear's Dust, and realised she'd already done it. And done it really well. And that's fine -- I certainly don't feel like I have some sort of privileged ownership over the idea, and there are plenty more where it came from. Besides, Elizabeth Bear is a much better author than I almost certainly ever will be. It pleased me to see an idea that I thought was cool turned into such a fun book.

That's probably where my thinking on the issue would have stopped, but I've just started reading Greg Bear's latest book, Hull Three Zero, and you know what? It's the same idea. The execution of the two stories is obviously completely different, but one could even imagine that both Elizabeth Bear and Greg Bear had been given the same writing prompt before they wrote their novels.

So, today's lesson: it's not the idea that counts, it's what you do with it. I mean, obviously I always knew that, but I don't think I really knew it until now. And if anything, this makes me want to go back to that idea, and see how my own version turns out.

Do you think this is what they were talking about at the "Has SF eaten itself?" panel?

Let's just pretend this is content

I'm trying to form my thoughts on Elizabeth Bear's Dust into something coherent that I can present here. I could just review it, but I think I'd rather tease out some of the connections I'm seeing with the novellas "The Tear" and "The Days of Solomon Gursky", both by Ian McDonald. I'm just not sure how to do that (or even if the connections are actually there).

So, while I continue to ruminate, I'm going to direct you to the Kirkus blog to keep you entertained. John DeNardo has posted the first of a six-part series entitled How to Start Reading Science Fiction. This is relevant to my interests because, as I've mentioned before, I have friends who find modern science fiction completely impenetrable, or completely uninteresting, and frequently both. I'm intrigued to see how John goes about introducing the genre, and particularly whether he sticks to the classics or talks about modern stuff.

(I should also say that I found out about this from the always useful SF Signal.)

Diving the Wreck

I just finished reading Diving the Wreck, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This is a novel that grew out of a couple of Reader's Choice Award-winning novellas published in Asimov's. I liked it fine. It's about a woman (called only 'Boss') who dives wrecked spaceships, largely for historical interest. The book is really focussed on the dangers of those dives, playing up the tension pretty effectively. This is not science fiction where people happily don spacesuits and whip about the place safe and secure -- oxygen is scarce, suits rip easily, and a single mistake can cost you your life.

The writing is straightforward, which makes the book easy to read. I also liked Boss' story arc. She spends time throughout examining her own motivations and mistakes, in a way that makes her come across as very capable, but completely believable. Maybe not likeable, but admirable.

The book, I feel, is an excellent demonstration of an author keeping her promises. For example, Rusch makes it very clear that diving wrecks is dangerous, that people can die. And then people do. That's satisfying, but it also means (at least in this case) that there wasn't any point where the book particularly surprised me.

You could do far worse than pick up Diving the Wreck, but it probably won't change your world. Sometimes, though, that's exactly the sort of novel you're looking for.

I play one on television

I just got through watching the latest episode of Stargate Universe. The show has been cancelled after only two seasons, and I think that is potentially* a real shame. It's really good sci-fi television, and I say that as someone who has no love for any other part of the Stargate franchise (except perhaps the movie).

I was thinking as I watched it tonight that one of the things I really like about it is its portrayal of scientists. The show is about a group of people -- roughly equal numbers military personnel and civilian scientists -- stranded on an alien starship a very long way from home. It has examples of the standard scientist archetypes: the untrustworthy megalomaniac Nicholas Rush (excellently played by Robert Carlyle), and the naive boy-wonder Eli Wallace (David Blue). They're well-written, more than just archetypes, but they're familiar.

The thing I really like, though, is that there are a few more scientists on the recurring cast -- Volker (Patrick Gilmore), Brody (Peter Kelamis), and Park (Jennifer Spence) -- and they're just ordinary people. They've got personalities, they're smart without being scary or sinister or staggeringly brilliant, they're sympathetic. That sort of portrayal of scientists (and smart people in general) is rare in television and film, and I find it very pleasing to watch.

I'm sorry it's getting cancelled, I really am.

* I say 'potentially' because the show's creators have known for some time that they're being cancelled. With any luck that's given them an opportunity to wrap the story up satisfactorily, which is pretty rare for American television.

Update: To Say Nothing of The Dog

In the end, I decided to suck it up and give To Say Nothing of the Dog the attention it deserved. Having made that decision, it took me only two days to polish off the second half (the first took me almost three weeks).

I was right about the difficulties I was having: they had nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with the way I was reading it. This book is a really clever mystery, and I was missing that because I wasn't concentrating. I didn't get the big twist, but I got enough of it to feel like I hadn't been totally left behind. I'm quite certain all the clues were there to piece the whole thing together, if only I'd paid closer attention. Even better, the hints were so beautifully integrated with the story that they never once called themselves out.

A few times, the main character was just on the verge of working everything out. I'm not sure if it was purely a writerly trick, but every single time he reached that point, I felt like I was almost there too. Whether it was a trick or not, it was excellently done. 

In fact, that's my overwhelming impression of the whole novel: it was really well orchestrated. The payoff had all the satisfaction of a good mystery solved, but it also had all the (guilty?) pleasure that comes with the resolution of a good period romance. It even managed to sustain the dry humour right to the very last line. To Say Nothing of the Dog is definitely going on my bookshelf, because I'm sure I'll read it again. Quite a turnaround from my thoughts just two days ago, hey?

I haven't spoken yet about the other two books by female authors that I've read this year -- Elizabeth Bear's Dust and Nancy Kress' Steal Across the Sky -- but I will say that this plan to read more SF written by women is really paying off.

I read in small chunks

Eesh. I promised I was back to regular posting, and then immediately went silent again. For nineteen days. Sorry about that! I've got an excuse, or at least an explanation: I'm really struggling with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. And whenever I find my reading a bit of a chore, everything else slams to a halt.

So why am I finding To Say Nothing of the Dog slow going? It's a good question. It's true that it is a time travel story, and I'm not particularly fond of those. But it is well written, and often drily funny, and set almost entirely in a time and place that I enjoy in historical novels (Victorian England -- there's a bit of Jane Austen, and a bit of P.G. Wodehouse to it).

In the end, I think it is purely a mechanical issue. I read in many small chucks across the course of a day. A couple of pages waiting for the bus, a couple of pages waiting for the kettle to boil. The chapters in To Say Nothing of the Dog are fairly long, and completely without breaks. These things are combining to make the book feel really disjointed. It doesn't flow, because I keep interrupting it.

If you're supposed to write what you like to read, there's a lesson in this for me. Short scenes, frequently breaks. The issue that's vexing me at the moment, though, is this: do I push through to the end of To Say Nothing of the Dog, or do I put it aside for a time when I can give it the attention it deserves?