Babel Clash

When it comes to fantasy, I don’t mind if a writer ignores reality.  This shouldn’t be that odd.  Fantasy is, by definition, an escape from reality.  Or, if not an escape, at least a chance to see a world that might have been.  The important element is that, either way, fantasy is just reality as we know it with a tweak here or there that allows the impossible to happen.

I go into fantasy with eyes wide open, knowing that reality can be, will be, discarded if it allows a human to teleport or an invasion of space robots.  I don’t need a justification beyond this is fantasy, and that’s what makes it awesome.

I know writers who work hard to justify fantasy.  Just the other day, someone told me that if they were going to write a story with someone who turned invisible, they’d have to come up with a reason why that person wasn’t blind at the same time.  It’s a legitimate question, or it would be if becoming invisible was something that could actually happen in real life.  But it can’t, and unless the goal of your invisible man story is to make someone think being invisible would stink, then it’s counter productive.

This is the “Superman would kill Lois” fallacy.  It comes from a well-meaning place, but it misses the point.  Superman (and much of fantasy) isn’t meant to be realistic.  Superman, like most superheroes, is not intended to be a horror story about a superhuman who accidentally crushes to death everyone he loves.  It’s a mistake to approach it from that angle, even if to do so is with the best of intentions.

This is why I prefer fantasy to science fiction.  Even my science fiction stories are fantasies.  I can’t give you a reasonable excuse for death rays, robots, and alien life forms.  I just know that they’re neat, and that’s really all I need to know.

Fantasy elements should have limits, but those limits don’t need to come from reality itself which already has the biggest limit of all.

I’m sure if I tried very, very hard, I could come up with a semi-believable reason for why getting bitten by a radioactive spider would give someone superpowers.  I know there are writers who strain to justify integalactic travel against the unforgiving limit of the speed of light.  And if anyone thinks there will ever be an even remotely scientifically plausible justification for telepathy, Hulking out, or dragons breathing fire, they’re more optimistic than I.

Syndicated from orbitbooks.net.

Time flies.  It seems like only yesterday that we embarked on this journey together, you and I.  One novelologist, one magic internet machine, and millions of adoring fans hanging on my every word.  It’s been fun.  More importantly, it’s been educational.  So what have we learned?

We’ve learned that Batman is magic.

We’ve learned that when giant robots fight, we all win.

We’ve learned that pulp fiction is awesome.

We’ve learned that the gods of old are a bunch of losers, just like the rest of us.

Most importantly, we’ve learned that in any fight, always bet on Tarzan.  (Wait.  Maybe I didn’t cover that.  In which case, I apologize, but my time is up and such wisdom is for a later date.)

Seriously, it was a great ride.  At least for me.  I can’t really speak for anyone else, but any chance to share my opinions with the greater public is always fun.  Hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.  That’s probably unrealistic though, so let’s hope you enjoyed reading them half as much as I enjoyed writing them.

It’s been an honor, folks.  Thanks for having me.  Thanks for reading.  And thanks for buying my books.  Divine Misfortune is on sale now.  (One last plug before I go isn’t so wrong, is it?)

I’m out.

Laterz (with a Z because I’m cool like that).

Your friend and fellow Terran,

Lee

Has it really been two weeks?  Seems like only yesterday we started debating the magical status of Batman.

Thanks, Lee for your excellent contributions to Babel Clash!  Is there anything else you’d like to say about Divine Misfortune (or anything else for that matter) before you sign off?

And tune in tomorrow for the beginning of our conversation with Celine Kiernan & Glenda Larke.

People don’t like cliches.

People LOVE cliches.

And there’s really no reason they shouldn’t.  Cliches are everywhere, all the time, in every story.  Even the most popular story is built upon a house of cliches.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Harry Potter is a reluctant everyman chosen by destiny to defeat an evil tyrant.  Hermoine Granger is an overeager, booksmart student who is never quite as smart as she thinks she is.  Ron Weasley is a well-intentioned, clumsy underachiever.  Dumbledore is a wise mentor.  Snape is a red herring.  And Voldemort is an evil madman who wants to rule the world.

There is nothing original about any of those characterizations.  Nothing to make them jump off the shelf at the reader.  Yet Harry Potter is outrageously popular (just in case you didn’t know this already).  I’m not attacking the books.  I’m merely pointing out the obvious.  For all it’s praise, Harry Potter is not original.  This is hardly surprising.  Originality is an overrated virtue.  The audience doesn’t care if your characters are original.  They just want characters they can care about.

While it might be heresy to some, let’s compare another phenomenally YA series:  Twilight.  Bela is the typical unnoticed (yet somehow beautiful) and unpopular outsider.  Edward is the eternal youth who discovers dangerous passion via th discovery of his “true love”.  And Jacob…well…Native American werewolves really are a dime-a-dozen at this point.

I’ll leave history to determine which series is the better, but both are riddled with cliches.  Neither suffers for them.  Cliches are nebulous things.  They’re almost impossible to pin down and even harder to avoid.  For example:  Johnny is an outsider, a rebel, who discovers, through the attention of a dedicated teacher (yet another cliche), that he has a future.  OR Johnny is an outsider, a rebel, who is swallowed up by the hopeless indifference of the streets, turning to a life of crime.  Johnny #1 goes to college, uses his education to rise from his circumstances, and becomes a useful member of society.  Johnny #2 joins a gang where he applies his utter ruthlessness to become kingpin of the neighborhood.  Either way you slice it, Johnny is a cliche.

You can even cut it thinner.  Johnny #2A becomes an untouchable crimelord.  Johnny #2B is betrayed by his own cutthroat henchmen, learning too late that crime is a harsh mistress.

But wait, let’s go for one more while we’re at it.  Johnny #2B1 is brutally murdered, his life and death amounting to nothing but a harsh morality play on the dangers of a violent world.  Johnny #2B2 barely survives his betrayal.  He recovers from his injuries with the help of a hooker with a heart of gold (why the heck not?) and enacts his own bloody revenge on those who betrayed him.

And so it goes.  Every path, every turn, is just another story that’s been told before being played out by characters that have existed, in some permutation or another, since the dawn of storytelling.  (For the record, I love the word permutation and will use it every chance I get.)  So let’s just admit this.  Cliches are everywhere, and the only way to avoid them is to write something bizarre that, even if it does make sense, is probably not very satisfying.

And really, let’s get down to it.  People like cliches.  They just don’t like all of them.  The problem is that nobody quite agrees on which cliches are good and which are bad.

I’m a fantasy guy.  Not just fantasy, but crazy, outrageous fantasy.  I like giant robots, evil geniuses, raging werewolves, and mole people.  Oh, how I love mole people and giant robots.  Some consider these things silly.  For the record, they are wrong, but the object of this article is not to correct these fallacies.

I’m not a big fan of low fantasy.  Or English period costume dramas.  Or any movie where someone dies tragically so that a writer can impress us with how deep he / she is.  Yet there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these types of stories.  They just aren’t my cup of tea.

People use the term cliched when they don’t like something, and they overlook cliches when they do.  That’s just the way it works.  The term cliched itself has never meant much to me.  It’s a convenient catch-all, and while it rarely means what people think it means, it always reflects a story falling short for someone.  So let’s give cliches a break.  They’re out there, everyday, working hard, building our favorite stories.

Good night, little cliches.  And good luck.

I’m not going to lie to you.  I like it when giant robots fight.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I write fantasy and sci fi because I enjoy the chance to explore characters and ideas unfettered by pesky reality.  I want to write about Quetzalcoatl, about country-fried vamps, and drunken ogres because somebody has to, and it might as well be me.  I love exploring how these types of characters are different than we mere humans, and I love exploring how they’re the same.  Believe it or not, I do try to have some depth in my stories.  I’m not suggesting that you’ll discover some profound insight in my novels, though I won’t mind if you do.  Just tell me what it is so that I can act like I did it on purpose.  But, still, I try to do more than just write weird stories.

But, let’s be perfectly clear, I love writing weird stuff.  If I can write a novel where an eyeball monster threatens to destroy the universe, I will.  If I think of a great scene of characterization that just happens to invovle two down-on-their-luck gods sitting on the couch, watching TV, talking about women troubles, it will be written.  And if I can think of a place to insert a naked man fighting a hellhound, then it’s going to happen.

Yes, I want to have my cake and eat it too.

I want to go wild, and I want to be taken seriously.  I want to make you smile, and I want to have you think (or give you the opportunity at the very least).  I don’t want to just have giant robots smash each other to bits.  I want to make you care about the giant robots smashing each other to bits.  Because, really, aren’t giant robots people too?

Robots are awesome.  If they had been more robots and less people, Transformers 2 might have been worth seeing.  Superman Returns wasn’t very good precisely because it was too busy apologizing for being about a superhero who can bench press a yacht.  And Avatar was only really tolerable because at one point, a battledroid was crushed beneath the hooves of a space rhino.

On the other hand, Kung Fu Panda had great characters and a nuanced plot.  It also had an amazing martial arts battle on a crumbling bridge.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs took a ridiculous premise and ran with it.  The result was a surprisingly touching and fun film.  Heck, would The Lord of the Rings movies be as popular if not for the epic battle scenes?

We like the fantastic for being fantastic, and there’s no reason to deny that.  Some of us never grow out of liking robots and dinosaurs (or, even better, robotic dinosaurs).  It doesn’t mean we can’t apply a little grown up sophistication to the topic while still admitting that a cosmic monster battle for the fate of the universe is just plain neat.

It’s not just the good ol’ days and the bygone eras that I miss.  I miss the things that never actually happened and the places only dreamt of.

I miss Middle Earth, Narnia, Fionavar, and Prydain.  They never really existed anywhere except imagination - the authors’, mine, countless other readers’ - but they are so real and important to me that I can truly say that I miss them.  Never mind that, like your pulp books era, these worlds weren’t written to be nearly as perfect as they exist in my imagination.  They were written to contain evil & death & hatred & darkness, but I only remember the good & beauty & magic & light and I miss them something fierce.

So if you need me, I’ll be riding a horse in Rohan.

I miss pulp.

This doesn’t make much sense.  I am too young to have experienced the age of pulp.  I have a few Tarzan books from the age, but that’s about it.

This isn’t truly fair to the current world of publishing.  It’s easy to look back at a bygone era and pine for the good ol’ days.  But those days weren’t as good as you remember or imagine.  The trick of memory and imagination is that it allows us to envision the past the way we want to, for good or ill.  The pulp era I miss most probably never existed.  It doesn’t stop me from missing them.

So what do I miss?

I miss when books were cheap, when they were less of a specialty product.  I do have some experience with this as a long time comic book fan.  If I may lapse into my whizzened old man voice for a moment:

In my day, comics cost seventy-five cents!  And you didn’t need to go to some out of the way comic book store to get ‘em neither!  All you had to do was walk down to the local convenience store and check out the spinnin’ rack.  Sure, the comics were printed on cheap paper and full of advertisements, but at least ya could afford to buy ‘em and actually find ‘em without making a day trip outta it!

Resuming normal voice:  Yes, it’s true.  In many ways, it was a wonderful time to be a comic fan.  Especially a young one.  When I first collected comics, I did so because it was cheap.  This is no longer true.  The comic book market continues to shrink, and I believe it’s because the cost has put it out of the reach of the younger fans.

And isn’t it the same with the publishing industry?  Aren’t novels getting awfully expensive?  I love that I’m doing well enough and my publisher has enough faith in me to print my books in hardcover.  Divine Misfortune is a low, low twenty bucks (subtle self-promotion at work), but that’s still not cheap.  Certainly not pulp cheap.

In the (most probably imaginary) pulp era I envision in my dreams, books were cheap and plentiful.  They had typos.  Many of them were dreadful.  But they were accessible.  They were something anyone could buy without having to consider them “a hobby”.  Reading was just something people did because it was easy and fun to do.

It’s easy to be critical.  Especially when comparing the real world to some beautiful Utopia that only exists as a dream, a perfect world that never was.  The publishing world has been very generous to me, and it’d be foolish of me to be ungrateful or excessively critical.  My experience with publishers, editors, agents, and fans have all been uniformly wonderful, and in no way do I want to imply that dissatisfaction with my career is the the root of this yearning.  I’ve done better than I have any right to expect.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when I close my eyes and allow myself the luxury, I miss pulp.

Time for a bit of crass commercialization.  Sort of.

I’d like to talk about DIVINE MISFORTUNE, my new book.  It just dropped in stores a couple of weeks ago, and yes, I used the word “dropped” for my books because I figure if it’s good enough for hip hop, it’s good enough for me.

Divine Misfortune is about gods.  Gods that are a lot like people if you put aside the immortality and wrath.  I tend to write about monsters and weird characters, robots and vampires, etc., but rather than finding it becomes an obstacle toward writing about people, I find it frees me up to really explore what being human is all about.

The gods in Divine Misfortune are mythological in form and function.  They’re very human.  They’re also extremely powerful and completely immortal.  They can be hurt, sure, but nothing can kill them.  And they might like human followers for the prestige, but they don’t technically need humans.  Yet, in their perceptions and attitudes, these gods are human.  And so you take a human, make that human immortal, give that human great power, and then sit back and see what happens.

Personally, I don’t think limitations make us human.  Although these gods do have limits.  Still, compared to your ordinary, everyday human, they live by a different set of circumstances.  And what they do, how they live, is something I strive to make relatable.  Not just relatable, but even thoughtful.  If you think about it, we might not have the ability to smite our enemies, but we certainly have the ability to do great harm.  And great good.  Perhaps the biggest difference between the gods and humans is that gods don’t have the luxury of dodging the responsibilty.  Although they do.  Quite often.

The gods might be the most powerful of the strange characters I’ve explored, but they aren’t the most inhuman.  Not by a longshot.  Right now, I’d have to say that honor goes to Mack Megaton, the indestructible crushing machine protagonist of The Automatic Detective.

Mack is a robot, and I’ve always wondered just what that would be like.  If you think about it, most everything we do as a human would be pointless for a robot.  So many motivations are moot when you’re a robot.  Perhaps this is why so many robots in fiction want to be human.  It’s not because there’s anything great about being human.  It’s because a robot has to do something, and what are you going to do with him if he doesn’t want to be human.  Have him destroy humanity, of course.

It was very important to me that Mack be of neither philosophy.  I didn’t want him to envy humans, and I didn’t want to have him despise us.  Either motivation seems too one-dimensional, even for a robot.  Instead, I wanted to write a story where a robot wrestles with his purpose, his instincts, and his fellow citizens like we all do.  Mack is just a guy trying to find is way in the city, and while you’d think being nearly indestructible would make that easy, you might be surprised.

Also, I wanted to write a story where someone punches a giant, melting mutant in the face.  But that was just icing on the cake.

If there’s a central theme to what I try to do (and, yes, I am pretentious enough to suggest that there just might be), it’s that being human ain’t easy.  Even if you are a vampire, witch, or god.

And if I may be so bold as to suggest a secondary theme to my work, it’s that everyone likes watching giant, melting mutants getting punched in the face.

I don’t write sequels.  I don’t like sequels.  Sequels make sense commercially.  They make sense to authors, who get to explore tried and true characters.  They make sense to publishers, who are always eager to entice readers back.  And the make sense to readers, who, if they’re going to spend hard-earned money on a book, want at least some assurance that they’ll be getting something they like.

Sequels just make sense.

But I don’t write them.  I’m not suggesting that I never will, but at this stage, not yet.  I don’t fault writers for writing them, publishers for publishing them, or readers for reading them.  I see where they’re all coming from, and there are plenty of great series novels out there.  They just don’t appeal to me.

As a writer, I find writing new ideas, new worlds tremendously appealing.  It stimulates my creativity in a way that I don’t believe a continuing series could.  I’ll admit it’s not always easy.  Sometimes, coming up with a new story can be a real pain.  Especially since I strive to do something a bit different every time.  Of course, if it’s too different then any potential fans might not be very happy.  Although I’m lucky enough to have a strong base of fans who love my willingness to experiment.  So the question I must always face when starting a new project is how can I make this different, but not too different?  How can I explore a new universe with its own unique rules and themes without alienating my fan base?

It’s then that I can see the appeal of sequels and series.  Writing a book is tough.  It’s a lot of work.  You might read a book over the weekend that took me eight months to write.  And we won’t even get into the extensive editing process that comes into play once the publisher gets involved.  Many people have put hundreds of hours of work into my books.  And there’s no guarantee that just because someone liked my book about Mack Megaton, robot detective, that they’ll dig the adventures of Lucky, the raccoon god of prosperity.  With a sequel, most readers will give you the benefit of the doubt.

It can be scary, but as an artist, it’s also satisfying, a chance to flex my creative muscles and explore worlds, characters, and themes I couldn’t address in my previous stories.  Series have their advantages, and I love recurring characters and settings as much as the next guy.  I just love surprising myself and the reader more.  I love that when you open an A. Lee Martinez novel, you aren’t really sure what you’re going to get.  That’s what fantasy should be all about.

Sure, that means taking a risk, but it’s a risk well worth taking.  Both as a writer and as a reader.

Ah, the debate continues.  Clearly, this is bigger than Batman.  This is about perception itself.  This is about fantasy versus reality, magic versus science.

Really, this is all about semantics.

So let’s walk away from the specific example of Batman for a moment and speak about fantasy and sci fi in general.  It should hardly come as a surprise that as a writer of fantasy that I like fantasy and sci fi.  I like robots and spaceships, vampires and otherdimensional moon monsters.  I enjoy a story all the more if it has a raccoon god or a telepathic alien thrown in the mix.  But I enjoy fantasy in all its forms.

I enjoy martial arts movies where people do amazing stunts.  From a realistic perspective, what they’re doing is real.  It is possible for Jackie Chan to jump through the rungs of a ladder, land in a shopping cart, and slide out, delivering a kick to the bad guy.  I’ve seen him do it.  But possibility is not probability.  Or even feasibility.  Every stunt is a highly rehearsed moment that often doesn’t go right the first time.  (Witness Chan’s outtakes at the end of virtually every one of his films.)  The action sequence we end up getting is the best of all possible worlds, a highly polished dance staged to appear spontaneous, surprising, and thrilling.  It is a fantasy though because while it is possible through the magic of movies, it is just about impossible in real life.

Fantasy is a wider genre than just superheroes and dragons.  And magic is more than just fireballs and teleportation spells.  Such distinctions might be important for the universe the story takes place in, but they are usually artificial.  They are limitations placed on the reality so that everything doesn’t turn into chaos.  Now, in the interest of not repeating myself, I won’t suggest that superheroes, who live in a universe of infinite possibilities, are the ultimate fantasy characters.  That they are, to a one, magical beings even if many of them aren’t technically magical.

Honestly, I’ve always felt the definition between fantasy and sci fi, between realism and fantasy, to be a thin one.  It’s always struck me as odd that people want to read about a character like Batman, a character who is as mythic and supernatural as Ulysses or Beowulf, and decide that he isn’t.  But his accomplishments, his skills, his equipment, all this is the stuff of legend.  Individually, you could argue that any of them are possible.  But are they probable.  Could anyone do what Batman does?  Clearly, the answer is no because we have never had a Batman in real life.

Too often in fantasy I feel that we confuse the trappings of the world with magic.  To say that Green Lantern isn’t magic, but his ring is is technically correct.  But would you be interested in reading a story about Green Lantern without his ring?  Would you like to read a story about the ring itself?  No, Hal Jordan and his ring are one character, bound together in a fantastic bargain.  Just as you could take away the ring and still have Hal Jordan, you’d destroy both elements.  Nobody wants to read about Hal Jordan, test pilot.  So the ring might be the source of his power, but it’s also the source of his popularity.  It makes him magic, and without it, he’s not that interesting.

Same with Batman.  You could have the exact same character, but take away his utility belt, his cool car, his amazing skills, and set them at a reasonable level, then no one would give a darn about Bruce Wayne.  No one wants to read the story of a boy who loses his parents and then grows up to be a business tycoon.  No, what makes Batman worth reading about is everything magical about him.

I like magical characters.  I like it when they do magical things.  And if you’d rather not label him as such to enjoy his adventures, well, it’s all just semantics in the end.  But as a fantasy writer, I have no problem enjoying fantasy because it is fantastic.  And I find labels to be an obstacle toward embracing the joy that comes from enjoying a good fantasy, rather than allowing me to appreciate them.

Clearly though, this debate will not be settled here.  I’ve had it many times before, and rarely, if ever, make any traction.  Ultimately, we enjoy what we enjoy.  Whatever labels we’re comfortable using are just there for our own convenience.  So you can call Batman a fantastic character, or a realistic character, or an awesome character.  You can call him whatever you like.

But for me, Batman IS magic.  And he always will be.