Babel Clash

Thanks again to Brent & Joe!

I’m very pleased to announce that our next feature guest is Karen Miller, author of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series and the Godspeaker Trilogy. Her new novel, Prodigal Mage, is on-sale 8/10.

Karen has also written the Star Wars novel Wild Space and two excellent novels under the pen name K. E. Mills.

Tune in tomorrow to learn the topic of our next geeky debate.

Brent & Joe,

It has been a blast having you on Babel Clash. Thank you for sharing your battle of wits.

With your last post or two, do you want to close with one final argument? Say, hypothetically, that a reader can only read one fantastic, brilliant book this summer. He or she whittles his choice of authors down to Joe Abercrombie and Brent Weeks. Which book should this reader choose, and why?

How’s that for putting you guys on the spot?

Ooh, ooh, a subject on which we can agree (no, not that I look like a male prostitute from Fable) but that the death of Aerith in FF7 was a great moment.  I walked around open-mouthed for hours.  Then I cried, and cried, and cried.  Then the denial.  Then the anger.  Then I cried, and I cried, and I cried again.  Then the denial.  It was a tough couple of years.

Bioshock?  Yeah, meh, I dunno, I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but although it was a beautifully rendered setting and the deco styling and all was very cool, I found it was a bit of a mediocre and rather claustrophobic shooter under the skin, and from all the hype I’d been expecting all kinds of clever moral choices and character advancement, and didn’t really find much of the sort.  You make a good point, actually, about the paucity of games with any kind of genuine moral depth.  I remember when Black & White was hailed as a revolution in gaming, a god-game in which the world would supposedly alter to reflect YOUR personality.  It bore the tagline, “find out who you are”.  But when it came down to it the only real option seemed to be a simple choice between “very bored” and “extremely bored”.  Fable and its sequels, though good games, are others in which I don’t necessarily feel the moral depth.  Likewise inFamous, which I’ve been playing recently, gives you the opportunity to run the entire moral spectrum from really evil to really good, with none of the stages in between, although at least it doesn’t lay claim to any particular sophistication.

Ironically, those games that trumpet their moral complexity often seem to be the simplest of all, and often are the least flexible plot-wise.  Maybe it’s the attempts to somehow ‘quantify’ morality, to reward it or not reward it.  I find the morality is often more interesting in games that are much more open-ended.  You mention Fallout 3.  I was a big fan of the original Fallout games way back in the 17th century and, not being a huge fan of Oblivion (I like it, but find certain elements execrable), I was watching through one eye to see how Bethesda Studios messed up a really innovative and interesting (though long-dead) franchise.  I thought they succeeded brilliantly, and blogged about it at tedious length.  Hugely varied, hugely atmospheric, and with a good sense of humour too (almost as rare in computer games as it is in American fantasy authors - Zing!)

Morgan’s question about what one would like to write a tie-in for brought to mind a game I left out - Thief.  Surely one of the most atmospheric and scary of all first-person games, with a superbly dark and rich fantasy world, and probably the most successful sneaking game ever done.  Stealth in computer games, like morality, is often talked up but very rarely done well…

Cheater! Since when do you pick reasonable examples, Joe? Gah! Fine, you had some good picks there. Loved Baldur’s Gate and KOTOR. Agh, do you hear the gnashing teeth here? (I am going to throw spoilers around freely in this post. I’m guessing if you haven’t played a game within a couple of years of its release, you probably never will.)

I think that until recently, American and European game studios haven’t treated games as a legitimate medium for adults. Perhaps the Japanese familiarity with anime helped them embrace video games earlier, whereas Americans saw video games as cartoons. (And we all know cartoons are only for children, right? Sort of like that fantasy stuff.)

The game that changed the, uh, game was Final Fantasy VII. Ah, Aerith. Aerith was Cloud’s love interest, cute and naive–and after you spend about 15 hours with her, she gets killed. Now, “death” is part of games, and it usually returns you to the town inn, or at worst the save point you left an hour ago. There’s ALWAYS a way to revive a dead character. Not this time. Aerith was Dead. I heard from friends that they’d actually cried. (Me, I was thinking, are you kidding me? Aerith was carrying my Murasame sword. Can’t I take it off her cold dead body?) Still, this was huge. FF7 was great for a lot of reasons, but that moment–where you couldn’t believe they’d actually done it–was what made it the first great game story in my mind.

More recently, I think the best story in video games was in BioShock. A stroll through an underground grave yard, BioShock did a great job telling lots of little stories through the voice recorders you’d find. Each one crackled with personality (and static). And the twist at the end was beautiful. My criticism of BioShock’s story, however, is two-fold: first, it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure novel with only one choice. Do you “harvest” (kill) the little sisters or don’t you? Second, that choice is robbed of its meaning, because it barely costs you anything to do the right thing. How about some redemption? What if I was tempted at first, and killed one creepy little urchin, but then felt terrible, and rescued the rest? Well, you still get the crap ending. No shades of gray here, folks. Boo. What, just because I kill one little girl, now I’m a murderer? Oh, when I put it that way…

Sadly, great stories aren’t needed to sell lots of video games. Gears of War? Go shoot stuff. (GOW2 was much better.) Call of Duty 4 tried to really hit you in the gut–the nuke actually goes off–but with a big, (pleasantly) international cast, a short storyline, and no time to connect to the characters, the exploding nuke is a nice light show, but I don’t feel all that bad for my wheezing and choking character who survives the initial blast and a helicopter crash, only to die moments later. Sucks to be him, who do I play next? (Great game, don’t get me wrong.)

Back to you, Joe. If you’ve played them–I, for one, will hold onto my ferocious disregard and doubt your gaming chops–what do you think about Fable 2’s and Fallout 3’s stories? (Go on, I dare you to admit you haven’t even played them. N00b.) For everyone else, here’s a little game. I call it, Find Joe. Hint: Joe is on record saying he “weighs more than ten stone.”

Video game novels are trendy. Warcraft, Halo, Gear of War & Bioshock are games with novel tie-ins out or coming soon. So, Brent & Joe, to hypothetically assume the luxury of spare time, is there any franchise out there for which you’d want to write a novel?

Or, even better… Joe, is there a video game novel that Brent should write? Brent, how about a video game novel for Joe?

Ah, Brent, Brent, Brent.  Your parting shots remind me of someone.  Who is it?  Ah, yes, it’s this guy, on the canvas.

But let us set aside our differences (particularly the massive difference between my amazing arguing ability and your frankly quite poor one) and concentrate instead on computer games.  I’ve been a keen gamer for pretty much all my life, from being captivated by big blocks of falling pixels on the black and white tv we had attached to our 2K Acorn Atom to pummelling Medieval Total War on my PC or inFamous on my PS3.  I’d have to say though that even today computer games aren’t always the most interestingly plotted things around, which makes anything surprising or unusual pretty interesting.  Often those that are more or less open-ended (like Elite on the BBC Micro, greatest single game of all time, no doubt, or Sim City or Civilisation, or the aforementioned Total War, all games into which I have poured literally months of my life) and can be played in many different ways are the most interesting.  Ones that actually have good stories tend, for me, to fall into the roleplaying camp.  Casting my mind far back, a game called Legend on the Atari ST blew my mind at the time because it had a very nice twist in the plot.  Probably not spoiling anything if I say the goodly King who sends your adventuring band on their quest turns out to be the villain.  Baldur’s Gate (and its sequels) was a later classic, which was one of the first games I played that really seemed to have a sense of humour in the dialogue options, and felt like a truly huge game world to explore.  Indeed the developer Bioware who were responsible for that, for Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic among many others, have always been some of the best and most interesting storytellers in the gaming business, for me.  Final Fantasy games, though frequently incomprehensible, also manage often to involve me closely, especially number 7, which quite blew my mind when it first came to the UK, and managed to wring quite a lot of raw emotion from some really rubbish sprites…

Man, I could be here all day, but come on, dig up some of your own…

Clearly, you lurk in darker corners of the internet than I do, Joe. Congratulations, you found an angry person on the web. Actually, I hadn’t seen those sites. But look, before these guys are hanged, let’s admit there might be a teeny, tiny reason why they FEEL misled. (Read from the bottom up and note the years passing for the full effect.)

And I’m surprised that you missed a particular word I used in my last post. I thought it might be a favorite of yours: “I.” That’s why I phrased it “What I owe readers.” “I,” as in, I.

So I don’t mean to leave you without a leg to stand on, Joe, but I spit flecky disdain on your best-served-lukewarm beer. This is probably the kind of tricky false dichotomy your vengeful Inigo Monza presents to the bad guys, huh? Erm, I mean the a-little-bit-worse-guys-than-the-main-guys. Look, George could obviously teach me a thing or fifty about writing. That doesn’t make him a master of Public Relations. Just like the fact that you’re British doesn’t make you a prat. Shoot, bad example. Let me leave you with this utterly devastating point, after which you have my permission to throw yourself on the blade itself.

Okay, we brawled for a week on that, I won, let’s call it the last argument of kings and move on.

Joe, which video game do you think has the best story? And what made it so good? Or if you hate my idea, I guess you could talk about THIS. (I didn’t know you had your own t-shirts! Who’s the model?)

p.s. In case you have no idea what that last video was, click here. Now the nerdy kids won’t laugh at you anymore for not knowing their 1337 lingo. The cool kids, however…well, sorry.

I have been asked to reduce the size of my posts, therefore I shall destroy you briefly.

Talk about frakking straw-men, it seems you’ve now taken to arguing with Neil Gaiman who, last time I checked, was not involved in this grudge match.  You obviously DARE NOT RESPOND TO MY ARGUMENTS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO INCREDIBLY RIGHT.  You imply the most irate readers are getting about Martin’s delays is to say, “that’s nice, but I want more story”?  I didn’t realise you LIVED IN NEVER NEVER LAND AS WELL AS WROTE ABOUT IT.  Let me open your innocent baby-eyes to these irate readers “you’ve never seen“:

You further straw man the straw man by arguing that writers have a moral obligation to finish a series.  But we’re not really talking about people refusing to finish, or abandoning a series - I can’t think of a single notable example of that.  We’re talking about people who take longer than expected doing it.  You say yourself that the most important thing you’ve learned in your impressive 700 days of experience is that you owe your readers “1. The absolute best stories I’m capable of writing”.  I agree with you (for once), but if it takes you longer to write the best story than you hoped, well, what can one do…?  I hope your next book will ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY BE TURNED IN NOVEMBER because if not I will be leading the PICKET ON YOUR HOUSE.

Looking at your three cardinal rules, are you saying George RR has 1. compromised on quality, 2. been discourteous without severe provocation or 3. dishonest?  If you cannot answer yes to one of these, I demand that we immediately DECLARE ME THE WINNER OF THIS ARGUMENT.

Come now, Brent.  Your name may be WEAKS, but your arguments don’t have to be…

If you’re in San Diego for Comic Con, please join Patrick Rothfuss, Rob Thurman, Thomas Sniegoski, Amber Benson, Seanan McGuire, Jeanne Stein & Kat Richardson for friendly debate and then a signing tonight (Saturday, July 25). The event takes place at 8:00 in the Borders store on 668 6th Ave, in the Gaslamp District.

I’ve heard a ton of buzz around Avatar, Scott Pilgrim and Kick-Ass movies coming out of the show. The Twilight manga is getting plenty of attention, and there is the giant obligatory presence for New Moon and True Blood & Charlaine Harris.

I’ll now return you to your originally scheduled programming. Brent & Joe, back to you…

No, no, no, Joe. You completely misunderstand the purpose of the Official Brent Weeks Ning Forum to Praise the Sublimely Laudable Brent Weeks ™! It isn’t for people to tell me how great I am. Are you kidding? If I let actual people into my forum, they might criticize me! Not all of us have bulletproof self-regard. You see, the truly impressive thing about the OBWN ™ is that I write EVERY SINGLE POST. Then I write in to thank myself. It’s a veritable post-modern palimpsest. (Sorry, Joe, I know you hate words with more than four letters. Or less, frel it.) It’s so meta, I can hardly stand it. I’m almost as good as the Amazon.com sock puppet master, HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED. No, no, not moldy Voldy. The OTHER one.

Anyway, there seems a common thought in artistic circles that artists don’t owe anyone anything. It’s garbage. (Whether carbuncles on the fat, wrinkly behind of writing such as fantasy authors deserve to be called “artists” is beside the point.)

Neil Gaiman does fantastic work and says huge numbers of intelligent, brilliant, and beautiful things. Unfortunately, in the middle of the argument several people have cited, he drops a big steaming pile of straw man. He sets up a weak argument so he can knock it down. He alleges that a reader is demanding that George R. R. Martin spend every waking hour writing. Joe, you repeat the canard with your own ineffable flavor: “how dare George Martin take a crap, he should be spending that wasted crapping time on Dance with Dragons.” (Odd that your ineffable Eau de Joe should redole of… loo hole, no?)

Now, maybe someone out there expects writers to write 24 hours a day, but I’ve never seen them. It’s easy to mock an argument no one is making; it’s just not fair, whether you’re a hugely talented writer, or Joe Abercrombie.

You write a series, people expect it to have an ending. (Let me be clear I’m not attacking GRRM, the guy’s a king and I’m a huge fan. It’s just impossible to address these arguments while ignoring Joe’s and Neil’s main example.)

If people knew your series wouldn’t end, most wouldn’t shell out $30 per hardcover. Especially not 5, 7, or 14 times. Can you imagine a book store clerk saying, “Oh, great choice! I love that series. It’s so awesome how it doesn’t end!” People understand that life and art are unpredictable (RIP Robert Jordan). But they want honesty. I think we owe them that. In the comments earlier, Morgan said it very tactfully, showing why he has an actual job: “If an author says that there will be a new book in a year, but it takes three, fans are ticked off…. It is that feeling of dashed hopes that turns even seemingly ordinary people into frenzied grouches.”

So when people ask you when they can give you more money for more story, and you tell them about figurines and swords and games and art they can buy, don’t be surprised if a few say, “That’s nice, but I want more story.” Gosh, what do you do? How about posting this: “Book going rough. Probably 2 more years. Working hard. Will be gr8!”

If a reader wants a writer to take the time to post that, clearly she demands that he write 24 hours a day. Come on, Joe. A writer could post that WHILE taking a crap.

Again, GRRM is hugely talented, and I love his work, and I think Joe and I each owe him a commercial and artistic debt. Though Joe’s debt is MUCH bigger. (Nah, ya don’t need to check that link. Here’s the only relevant part: “Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold…[is] missing a map.” -GRRM)

So here are my rules, forged in the hot fires of almost 700 days of publishing experience. What I owe readers:

1) The absolute best stories I’m capable of writing.

2) Courtesy. Some fans are louts. Lots of people have louts who pay their salaries. They deal, so can I.

3) Honesty. For professional reasons, readers don’t get to know everything, of course. And sometimes Thumper’s Maxim applies. But if I KNOW my next book is going to be late, or that I’m not going to be at a conference I said I’d be at, or can’t do an interview or whatever, ‘fess up, ya putz.

As for your little ha-ha about my allegedly limited abilities, well, I don’t know how to say this, friend, but I did a little search…

p.s. I realize I didn’t really get into addressing your last questions about what authors owe a reader INSIDE a book, but frel this post is getting long…