While I’m At It

Posted on August 25th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

And another thing. A small thing, really.

“I am among the finest writers working today.”

Who the fuck even says that?

Writers are permitted ego. You need ego to think that any silly shit that comes out of your head is worth the time and money of others. I have typed THE END to stories, thought, “This one’s gonna sell right away,” and been right; I have also, tellingly, been wrong. I have pegged certain stories of mine as certain award nominees, and been right; I have also, tellingly, been wrong.

But asked if I am among the finest writers working today?

I think I’m pretty good, but I live inside this head and know all the effects I can’t reach, the places where I failed to polish, the errors that torment me years later. I am able to point at many dozens of other writers who routinely pull off miracles that will always be beyond me. I read a good story, any good story, and I sink into a deep despair that I will never be able to match it with my work, which is fair to me, because every story is the product of a particular mind, and while I have written some stories that may approximate what Stephen King or Harlan Ellison or Joe Lansdale or others do, when I was writing in similar modes, I know that I am not that mind, not that particular brand of specialness.

Ask David Gerrold if he’s a fine writer. He will immediately tell you reasons why he’s not. Ask Neil Gaiman. He will thank you for asking but will immediately deflect.

Ask Stephen King. He will laugh at you. His collected words about his works are full of self-deprecation. Ask him that question and he will give you a long list of writers who he sees as better than himself.

As Harlan Ellison the same question. Okay, bad example. He is, in brag mode, in love with his own work. But at other points he will name dozens of folks for whom he harbors undiluted awe, who he will trumpet as not just his superiors but as monuments he will confess that he cannot even approach.

Hemingway knew he was a great writer. I bet if you had asked him the same question he would not have given a reply that didn’t include another dozen names, who he read and delighted to and tried to emulate, in example if not in specific, when being tormented by a story problem.

“I am among the finest writers working today.”

That, my friends, is the kind of statement that immediately casts doubt on itself.

Tags: Assholes, david gerrold, Ernest Hemingway, Harlan Ellison, Joe R. Lansdale, Life Wisdom, Neil Gaiman, sad puppies, Science Fiction, Stephen King, writing | Category Blog Business, Books, Commentary, Life Wisdom, Politics

What The Complete Puppy Shutout Means And Doesn’t Mean

Posted on August 23rd, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

Well, that happened.

And we should make no mistake what it means, and what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean that the Hugos no longer have any room for just-plain-meat-and-potatoes fun science fiction and fantasy.

That kind of material has won plenty of Hugos and will win Hugos again.

It doesn’t mean the Hugos no longer have room for conservative authors.

Conservative authors have won plenty of Hugos before and will win Hugos again.

It doesn’t mean that a SJW cabal wants to keep the Hugos away from Christian white men.

Christian white men have won Hugos before and will win Hugos again.

It doesn’t mean that the Hugo voters repudiated the nominees.

There were plenty of nominees who left the ceremony empty-handed and someday won’t.

Rajnar Vajra, Kary English, Arlan Andrews, Toni Weiskopf, even I am forced to say,  John C. Wright…they are not going to disappear forever just because Hugo voters rejected the Puppy slates. There are a couple of names who might be in danger of disappearing  sooner rather than later because their behavior has been beyond the pale, including one who has acknowledged it — but that won’t be just because the puppies nominated them. They made whatever beds they lie in. And those that did themselves damage instead of honor might effect repairs with self-correction. Lou Antonelli has said he has some distance to travel. I am not going to be the one who tells him I hope he can’t travel it.  I wish him luck.

The slates contained plenty of people who might get a Hugo someday, and among them some who should; some indeed, like Mike Resnick, who have and will again.

Nobody’s career was ruined last night. Nobody’s life was ruined last night. The books are still there. For those who write them, the readers are still there.

It also needs to be said that not everybody supported by the Puppies wore their support with particular pride, and among them are folks like Vajra and English who came out and said, “I’m not actually with these people.” For those who sat in that audience, it honestly had to hurt when cheers greeted the news that their category had gone to “No Award.” I want them to take heart. This was, in most cases, not about you. We’re sorry that your experience with being nominated for a Hugo was poisoned by this nonsense. You will be back.

Last night’s results don’t mean that the Hugo voters or their alleged puppet-masters are saying that only one kind of fiction will be allowed to win.

That’s really closer to the result the puppy-masters were after.

The Hugo results mean one thing: fandom rose up in revulsion and cried, “We don’t want this system gamed with block voting. You want to win a Hugo, win it the way you’re supposed to: by blowing away the readership with such brilliance that people can’t abide the idea of NOT giving you a Hugo.”

And, not coincidentally:

“Not spewing racism and homophobia and threats of violence all over the internet, and not smiling indulgently when your fans do the same, would also be a plus.”

Tags: Arlan Andrews, Assholes, Hugo Awards, Kary English, Rajmar Vajra, sad puppies, Science Fiction, Worldcon, writing | Category Blog Business, Commentary, Life Wisdom, Science Fiction, Writing

What You Find Putting Lovecraft “In the Context of His Time”

Posted on August 21st, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

On the subject of Lovecraft, to which we keep returning:

My own take is that he was supremely talented at describing dread and disgust and horrifically deficient in describing anything else; his admitted and proud disinterest in people as subjects of fiction shows in his work and renders the whole remote and soulless. His racism, as visible in his fiction as it was in his letters, is not just a pollutant but the toxic fuel that drives it, that renders it an embarrassment today.

I have always maintained that Lovecraft wrote what amounted to florid role-playing manuals, a universe that other writers could run with if they wanted; and though few of those who followed him were able to sculpt the language in quite the way he did, many had other positive attributes that more compensated, among them the solid understanding that stories usually require characters. I find his cosmology interesting, but his stories impenetrable, his racism appalling and his overall lack of interest in human concerns repellent.

I understand the debt we owe him, as the creator of that role-playing manual. I do not respect him as a writer, and never have. I consider him a villain of sorts, and have indeed used a version of him as one, in my GUSTAV GLOOM novels. The bad guy there is a one-time pulp writer called Howard Philip October, and you better believe that some of his awfulness is me commenting on Lovecraft, down to the very last volume.

People who say that I need to put him in the perspective of his time, only get me to call their bluff. Okay, at approximately the same time this producer of pulp fiction was producing his ooga-booga scares, give or take a decade or so, the equally disreputable field of detective fiction was being blown up into a fine art by Dashiell Hammett and later, Raymond Chandler. While he was farting around with his thesaurus, mystery fiction was producing Cornell Woolrich and James M. Cain. In the disreputable field of science fiction, John W. Campbell was astonishing the readers with stories like “Twilight” and “Night” that were not escapist fantasies but attempts to address big question, and a couple of years later taking over ASTOUNDING and blowing up his field with his demand that his contributors meet the same literary standards as mainstream fiction, while providing SF thrills, a demand that shifted the field away from the BEM of the month, and giving flight to the careers of Heinlein, Asimov, Pohl and others; an innovation that in years to come helped pave the way for Bradbury, Vonnegut, Silverberg, Ellison, Le Guin, an absolute revolution coming along every decade or so; all while many of the purveyors of horror fiction continued to produce Lovecraft pastiches.

There’s always room for shit to be published, journeyman stuff to be published, just-plain-fun stuff to be published. And there are backlashes, as we have learned in recent years. But it is certainly instructive to note what happens to a field when it chooses people like Hammett and Chandler as formative icons, what happens to one when it chooses people like Heinlein and Asimov as formative icons, and what happens to one when it picks a Lovecraft as a formative icon. Mystery and science fiction had ghettos, but on the page they had mushrooming possibilities and crossover successes. Horror had decades of navel-gazing reiteration, that is still going on in some quarters even after other influences finally found their way in.

Lovecraft wasn’t a big fat zero. I’ll be the first to admit that he had something. But between what mysteries got from their icons, and what science fiction got from its icons, and what horror got from its icon, I think it’s clear that horror picked the most limiting, unhealthiest role model, and for generations paid the price.

Tags: Cornell Woolrich, Frederik Polhl, Gustav Gloom, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, James M. Cain, John W. Campbell, Kurt Vonnegut, Mystery, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction, Ursula K. LeGuin | Category Books, Commentary, Horror, Life Wisdom, Science Fiction, Sneaky Metaphors, Writing