The Westermark woods near the town of Syke are my favourite local hiking spot and have been featured several times in these pages before.
Today was frosty and sunny, i.e. ideal hiking weather, so I drove out to the Westermark woods. I also took my camera along and managed to capture some truly magical light in the woods. So take a look: Continue reading
The days between Christmas and New Year are traditionally the time when the TV stations trot out the Hollywood blockbusters or wannabe blockbusters from two or three years ago in what they term “German free-TV premiere”. It’s also a time to catch up on those movies which looked kind of interesting at the time, but not interesting enough to see them at the theatre or get them on DVD.
And so it was that I chanced to watch Snow White and the Huntsman from 2012 tonight, starring Kristen Stewart as Snow White, Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman and Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen in a very loose adaptation of the fairy tale.
Now I have expressed my issues with the current vogue for updated adaptations of classic fairy tales before, namely that some of these adaptations feel like clueless cultural appropriation and that I resent the fact that these adaptations, whether good or bad, often tend to displace the original tales in the minds of many. Never mind that ideas like “I’m going to write a feminist fairy tale retelling” or “I’m going to retell a fairy tale from the antagonist’s point-of-view” often aren’t as original as their authors believe.
So where on the fairy tale retelling scale from Once upon a time and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, i.e. absolutely horrible, to Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella (Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel/Tri orísky pro Popelku) and The Fairy Tale Bride (Arabela), i.e. quite wonderful, does Snow White and the Huntsman fall? Squarely in the middle, it turns out. It’s certainly not a revelatory retelling, but a perfectly adequate and entertaining one. In short, good viewing for a holiday night.
Snow White and the Huntsman uses the fairy tale only as a very basic frame for its plot, while the rest of the story borrows from a dozen different sources. The sweeping vistas and battle scenes and dwarf songs are clearly influenced by Peter Jackson’s adaptations of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, while the gloomy colour palette is pretty much the look for gritty historical dramas and the grimdark end of fantasy these days. The Evil Queen’s practice to suck the lifeforce out of young women to retain her youth and beauty is clearly influenced by the legends surrounding the murderous Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory, while the incest vibes of the Evil Queen’s relationship with her creepy brother are straight from Game of Thrones. Snow White’s childhood love William takes up archery and guerrilla tactics borrowed from a dozen Robin Hood movies. Snow White’s horse getting stuck in the quicksand during her escape from the castle was taken from Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 adaptation of Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, where the very same fate befalls Atreyu’s horse. Except that Snow White and the Huntsman glosses over the horse’s fate, whereas The Neverending Story milks it for all the tears it’s worth. The dark wood into which Snow White escapes and the frightening visions it brings is reminiscent of Snow White’s scary flight through the forrest in the 1938 Disney adaptation of the fairy tale, of the Dark Side tree in the Dagobah scenes of The Empire Strikes Back, of the Swamp of Sadness from The Neverending Story and of the Darkwood from Simon R. Green’s Blue Moon Rising. Talking of which, the Evil Queen and her taste for spiky crowns is slightly reminiscent of the villainous Empress Lionstone in Green’s Deathstalker series.
So in short, the film is a hodgepodge of fantasy ideas we’ve seen before. It still works well enough and there are some moments and scenes that are reasonably original, such as the village of the scarred women, who deliberately scar themselves and their young daughters, so the Evil Queen won’t suck their beauty lifeforce out. Indeed, I would have loved to see more of the village of the scarred women and also more of the dwarves and the valley of the fairie folk.
Indeed, considering that Snow White and the Huntsman was a perfectly entertaining film, I was surprised by the amount of negative reviews on IMDB and elsewhere. Upon closer examination, it seems that the dislike for the movie was mostly due to the fact that a whole lot of people simply cannot stand Kristen Stewart.
Now I’ve never gotten the Kristen Stewart hate, but then I’ve never gotten the hate for Anne Hathaway or Keanu Reeves either. And the actors I dislike are usually not widely hated. In Kristen Stewart’s case, I suspect that much of the vitriol against her is actually displaced Twilight hate, especially since it was so very fashionable to hate Twilight for a while, combined with a good dose of slut-shaming following Ms. Stewart’s affair with Rupert Sanders, director of Snow White and the Huntsman, and her subsequent breakup with Robert Pattinson. Oddly enough, absolutely no one seems to blame Rupert Sanders for the affair, even though Sanders is almost twenty years Kristen Stewart’s senior and was a married father of two at the time.
Nonetheless, the Kristen Stewart haters may be on to something, because the character of Snow White is the weak link in Snow White and the Huntsman. Though I’m not sure if that’s really Kristen Stewart’s fault or the script’s.
Now it’s a feature of fairy tales that their characters are not very well rounded or developed. Perhaps this is also why fairy tale adaptations are so popular these days, because the characters are largely empty vessels waiting to be filled. In the version of Snow White recorded by the Brothers Grimm, no character has any sort of personality beyond good and evil. The dwarves didn’t become individual characters with individual personalities until the 1938 Walt Disney adaptation, on which most subsequent versions, including Snow White and the Huntsman, still draw.
Now Snow White and the Huntsman does actually quite well with the characterisation of the Evil Queen by giving her a motivation beyond “Well, she’s evil and terribly vain”. Because in this movie, Ravenna (yes, the Evil Queen gets a name as well) only becomes the monster she is in response to a world where her beauty is the only thing that interests men about her and allows her to wield power. One could almost consider that a feminist critique of the beauty myth, except that I don’t think the movie is that self-aware.
The Huntsman, a character who only appears very briefly in most versions of the fairy tale and is sometimes dispensed with altogether, is not just promoted to co-hero in this movie, he also gains the most characterisation and is turned into a grief and PTSD stricken widower, who slowly regains is ability to care about life. It’s not the world’s most original characterisation, but it works and Chris Hemsworth actually does quite well with what the script gives him.
Coincidentally, it’s quite interesting that knowledge about PTSD is so ubiquitous in our world today that it’s pretty much a prerequisite for fictional heroes these days. See the 2012 John Carter movie, in which John Carter is a troubled PTSD stricken widower and Civil War veteran who needs to learn to believe and love again, a characterisation which is quite far from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original version of the characters. And even the Mighty Avengers have now become the PTSD superteam – and isn’t it interesting that Chris Hemsworth as Thor is the only Avenger to escape the Marvel PTSD epidemic unscathed only to promptly catch it in Snow White and the Huntsman?
I find the sheer amount of fictional heroes with PTSD quite fascinating, especially since the knowledge that war and other traumatic experiences are – well – traumatising isn’t exactly new. But while military service in the most recent war of note has long been a prerequisite for fictional heroes particularly in the US, it is only in the past ten years or so that those heroes have been widely portrayed as traumatised by their experiences. There is also a marked difference between the traumatised Vietnam veteran of 1980s pop culture who was not necessarily a villain, but always a loose cannon, and the modern PTSD hero who manages to find a way to live with his PTSD and still remain or become a hero.
But while Snow White and the Huntsman portrays the Evil Queen as a woman driven mad by the beauty myth and the Huntsman as a PTSD stricken warrior who’s lost his will to live, the central character is Snow White herself remains rather bland. Oh, she has her feisty moments, when she stabs the Evil Queen’s creepy brother with a nail and later leads her army into battle clad in reasonable armour. But unlike with the Evil Queen or the Huntsman, we never really get a sense of who Snow White is. All we know is that she is brave and good and noble and pure and the embodiment of life and mightily pissed off at the Evil Queen. Unlike what many believe, Kristen Stewart is not a bad actress and in fact she makes a very good Snow White physically. However, the script doesn’t give her much to work with, so her Snow White remains rather bland.
Another problem is that the love triangle the film tried to set up between Snow White, her childhood love William and the Huntsman falls flat, because there simply is no chemistry between Kristen Stewart and her co-stars Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin. Now Kristen Stewart clearly had chemistry with Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner and the Twilight films. And Chris Hemsworth clearly had chemistry with Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings in the Thor movies. But here, Kristen Stewart has more chemistry with the dwarf who dies than with Chris Hemsworth and indeed I never got the impression that Snow White was even remotely attracted to the Huntsman at all, which takes some doing because half of all heterosexual women worldwide are currently attracted to Chris Hemsworth. And though Chris Hemsworth does his best to show that his character is infatuated with Snow White, he has more chemistry with pretty much every secondary and tertiary cast member in The Avengers or Thor than he has with Kristen Stewart. We were rooting for the Huntsman to end up with Snow White (besides, he was the one who kissed her back to life), but that was because Chris Hemsworth actually gave the impression to care for Snow White.
And indeed, the movie leaves the love triangle unresolved, probably hoping for a sequel, which so far hasn’t materialised. Hence the film ends with Snow White sitting on her throne, looking down benignly at both William and the Huntsman, who are both clearly besotted with her, and choosing neither. In that, the ending is quite reminiscent of the final scene of Star Wars, where Princess Leia hands out medals to Luke Skywalker and Han Solo (and none to poor Chewie) who are both pretty much falling over each other to attract her attention. But while the Star Wars ending pretty much crackles with sexual tension, as Leia refuses, for the moment at least, to choose between the man who will turn out to be her brother and the man who will be her lover and eventually husband (and J.J. Abrams had better not delete that particular part of expanded universe continuity), Snow White and the Huntsman does none of that. Instead, the scene implies that Snow White chooses the throne and the kingdom and decides against both William and the Huntsman. It’s the equivalent of Star Wars ending with Princess Leia declaring herself married to the rebellion.
So while Snow White and the Huntsman provided perfectly adequate entertainment, the movie could have been so much better, if it had given its protagonist Snow White a bit more characterisation beyond “She is a good person”.
Finally, if you have only one character of colour in the whole movie – and there is zero reason for everybody to be white, since this is not in fact that real Middle Ages in Europe, which coincidentally weren’t 100% white either – is it too much to ask not to make him a villain? Or better yet, have more than one character of colour?
First of all, a merry Christmas or other applicable seasonal holiday to all my readers and blog visitors.
Yesterday was a typically wet and mild North German Christmas Eve. I’m with my parents, as usual. Luckily, I didn’t have to leave the house again today, because we already bought all the last minute groceries yesterday.
This year, we switched the order of the food on the three Christmas days (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) around and had pork curry with all sorts of condiments for lunch on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow will be filet of hare with apple cranberry sauce and red cabbage. The reason is that my uncle is visiting us for lunch tomorrow and we have more of the hare than of the pork curry.
For dinner, we had a big bowl of red herring salad (which contains three salted herrings, three big bulbs of beetroot and about two dozen other ingredients), which will last at least till the weekend. I also made my Crab Rangoon cheese spread again, cause my parents like it.
This year’s tree, from my parents’ garden again, was rather skinny, which made it difficult to decorate. Though in the end, it turned out fine.
Of course, I took some photos as well. Unfortunately, my battery ran out, so I had to switch to a cellphone camera halfway through. Though that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the cellphone camera cast a nice soft glow over everything, compared to the harsher flash of the regular camera. Besides, I could photo-livetweet Christmas Eve, which was nice as well: Continue reading
Since it’s the run-up to Christmas, I’ve been watching favourite holiday movies, as they show up on TV. And so I ended up watching the 1980 adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy, starring Alec Guiness and Ricky Schroder, back to back with A Muppets Christmas Carol, starring Michael Caine and – well – the Muppets.
Now here in Germany, the 1980 adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy is a true holiday classic with a status much like that of It’s a Wonderful Life in the US (and a much better film IMO, but then I don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life very much). It’s that movie that’s always on TV during the run-up to the holidays somewhere and even though you’ve seen it a hundred times before, you still watch it anyway. A Muppets Christmas Carol doesn’t have the same classic status, though you can usually find several versions of A Christmas Carol on TV around the holidays and the Muppet version is a personal favourite of mine.
But watching both movies back to back, I was struck by how many parallels there are between both stories beyond the fact that both are based on classic works of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, first published in 1885, respectively.
In essence, A Christmas Carol and Little Lord Fauntleroy are both stories of grumpy old misers, Ebenezer Scrooge and the Earl of Dorincourt respectively, both played by distinguished British actors, Sir Alec Guiness and Michael Caine respectively, who learn about the spirit of generosity, compassion and of course the Christmas season via their exposure to sweet and angelic little boys, Tiny Tim and Ceddie Errol, Lord Fauntleroy, respectively. In Scrooge’s case, there’s also some significant supernatural intervention, probably because Scrooge is a more hardened case than the Earl of Dorincourt. Besides, Ceddie has more time to soften up his grandfather, since the novel spans several months rather than a single night like Dickens’ novella.
Both stories are basically Victorian morality plays about the importance of compassion and generosity towards the less fortunate. It’s a message that the Victorians age with its appalling living conditions for the poor, particularly poor children, needed to hear and it’s a message we’re still willing to listen to (and also need to hear on occasion), even though both Charles Dickens and Frances Hodgson Burnett drive it home with a somewhat heavier hand than a modern author would.
Nor are they the only popular holiday tales that praise generosity and compassion and tell of the transformation of a grumpy, unpleasant person, usually a man, into a happier and more open person. Indeed, this is the theme of a lot of classic holiday movies.
Die Zürcher Velobung (Engagement in Zurich a.k.a. The Affairs of Julie) from 1957, starring Liselotte Pulver, Paul Hubschmid and Berhard Wicki, is not just a lovely holiday movie (which for some reason is never on over the holidays) but also one of my favourite romantic comedies of all time. Again we get the transformation of a grumpy killjoy, film producer “Büffel” (buffalo) as played by Bernhard Wicki, into a more open and loving person, though Büffel has more of a reason to be grumpy than either Scrooge or the Earl, namely the fact that he’s a widower and single dad and has a mean toothache when we first meet him besides. Büffel’s transformation comes courtesy of Juliane (Liselotte Pulver), a struggling writer who moonlights as a dentist’s assistant, who in turn learns that romantic fantasies are just that, fantasies, and that sometimes Mr. Tall, Dark, Handsome and Swiss (Paul Hubschmid, being tell, dark, handsome and Swiss) isn’t necessarily Mr. Right. There’s the requisite cute kid as well, Büffel’s son played by a very young Roland Kaiser. Plus, the film also manages to subvert classic romance tropes and skewer the tropes of postwar West German cinema. Simply marvelous and also surprisingly risqué for the 1950s with clear hints of premarital sex and Juliane sharing a bed with both her suitors at one point (alas, the scene is entirely chaste). The film itself isn’t online sadly, but here is a trailer. There’s a 2007 remake, too, starring Christoph Waltz before he went to Hollywood and started playing Nazis and other villains for Tarantino, but it can’t hold a candle to the original.
Another holiday favourite of mine, We’re No Angels from 1955, starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray, tells the story of three escapees from Devil’s Island who hide out in the home of a beleagured shopkeeper and his family, end up saving the family from financial ruin and find themselves transformed into better people in the bargain. There even is a miserly villain, though he gets killed courtesy of Aldo Ray’s pet snake rather than transformed.
And even that popular American classic It’s a Wonderful Life is a movie that sings the praises of compassion and generosity, because both are what makes James Stewart’s character, the world’s worst banker with the possible exception of his flat out crazy uncle, a person whose life is nonetheless valuable and worth saving. Though like We’re No Angels, It’s a Wonderful Life has zero interest in saving and transforming resident villain and grumpy miser Mr. Potter. Indeed, it’s telling that the two variations on the popular theme that are pure Hollywood products rather than Hollywood movies based on classic novels, punish rather than save their miserly villains.
Of course, not all holiday movies fall into this pattern. For example, Love Actually, Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella and Christmas in Connecticut don’t, even though they’re all beloved holiday classics.
But nonetheless it is interesting that around the holidays, we seem to crave stories, even heavily moralistic stories, about unpleasant people transformed into better people. Maybe it’s the secret hope that like Scrooge or the Earl of Dorincourt or Büffel or the three convicts of Devil’s Island we, too, can become better people and find love and companionship due to a good dose of Christmas magic.
This is the third of the pre-Christmas new release announcements. This time around, it’s for the German edition of last year’s short holiday romance Christmas Gifts, so let’s switch to German right away:
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Nach zwei Ankündigungen für die englischsprachigen Leser gibt es jetzt auch noch etwas für die Fans deutschsprachiger Texte, nämlich eine Liebesgeschichte, die mitten im vorweihnachtlichen Shoppingtrubel spielt.
Das wundervoll winterliche und romantische Coverbild stammt übrigens von der russischen Künstlerin Ekaterina Kokushkina.
Last-Minute Geschenke
Bis kurz vor Ladenschluss am Heiligabend zu warten, um ein Geschenk für seine Mutter zu besorgen – das war sicherlich nicht eine von Tims besseren Ideen. Und dann hat der Laden auch noch eine Selbst-Einpackstation, wo Tim doch vom Geschenke Einpacken keine Ahnung hat.
Glücklicherweise begegnet er der unkonventionellen Shannon, die ihm ihre Hilfe anbietet.
Mehr Informationen zur Geschichte gibt’s hier.
Preis: 0,99 EUR, USD oder GBP
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As I said yesterday, I’ll be posting a trio of new release announcements in the run-up to the holidays and here is number 2. This time, it’s for a new fantasy novelette called Boardwalk Baby.
Boardwalk Baby is the result of one of those true sparks of inspiration. It began with a phenomenon that is well known here on the North Sea coast, namely that of abandoned seal pups, known as “Heuler” (howlers) in German, because they sound like crying babies. See this video. Orphaned and abandoned seal pups are collected and raised in several seal stations along the Dutch and German North Sea coast.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: If selkies are seal shifters, does that mean that there are selkie “Heuler”? And what would happen if humans were to find and raise such a baby selkie?
The result was the story of Izzy, an adopted kid with a lifelong affinity for the sea, who goes in search of her origins and finds more than she bargained for.
In the end, I decided to set Boardwalk Baby in the US rather than in Germany or the Netherlands, because the story worked better within the framework of the US adoption system rather than the German system, which is quite different. Besides, Ocean City is a lot cooler than the dull German seaside resorts and it allowed me to allude to the curious phenomenon of “infant incubators” as sideshow attractions in US seaside resorts in the early 20th century. There is an article about the “infant incubators” and their history here, though sadly the author can’t stop him- or herself from getting in a jab against abortion at the end.
So check out Boardwalk Baby, the story of a foundling selkie and her search for her roots:
Boardwalk Baby
There are two things about herself that Izzy has always known with absolute certainty: One, that she was adopted and two, that she has an affinity for the sea. For from her earliest memories on, the ocean has always called out to Izzy. But her adoptive parents thwart her attempts to get closer to the sea at every turn.
When Izzy turns eighteen, she goes in search of her past and her birth family. It’s a quest that will take her to the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey, and to a mysterious fur coat that might hold all the answers to Izzy’s questions.
For more information, visit the Boardwalk Baby page.
Buy it for the low price of 2.99 USD, EUR or 1.99 GBP
at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, txtr, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Der Club, Libiro, Nook UK, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance e-books, Casa del Libro, Flipkart, e-Sentral, You Heart Books and XinXii.
I’ll have several announcements to make in the next few days, because I have not one but three new books out. But don’t worry, this blog won’t turn into wall to wall promotion. It’s just a case of weird timing.
The first project I want to announce is massive anthology that was over a year in the making. And while we’re on the subject of anthologies, I also want to introduce you to the brand-new Anthology page on this site, which lists all anthologies to which I have contributed.
Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s an anthology of 101 flash fiction stories across different genres and styles by 101 different indie authors. The anthology was sparked by an idea by Hugh Howey (who also contributed a story) and was edited by Belgian writer Andrew Ashling, who writes some cracking good epic fantasy with gay protagonists, when he’s not editing anthologies.
The anthology was intended as a sampler for the breadth of genres and styles found in indie publishing. So whatever your reading preferences, you’re certain to find something in there you’ll enjoy. And who knows, you might just discover a new favourite writer.
Best of all, Stories to Go is available for free at most major e-book vendors. Yes, you read that correctly. The anthology is free (or 99 cents at those Amazon stores that couldn’t be bothered to pricematch). So what are you waiting for? Pick up your copy now!
Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors
This anthology aims to be a showcase of recent indie writing.
Hugh Howey launched the idea on Kboards, a forum for Kindle readers, but also the meeting place of an active community of indie writers.
The result is this anthology of 101 very short stories by 101 authors.
To make it more attractive for you, the reader, we set ourselves a limit of a thousand words. You should be able to read each story in under five minutes — on your desktop computer, laptop, or tablet at home or in the office, but also on your smartphone, on the go, while you are commuting or waiting at a coffee shop for your significant other to arrive.
We included as many genres as we could. We hope that maybe, with only five minutes of your time on the line that would otherwise be wasted anyway, you’ll be tempted to venture outside your comfort zone and try out some new genres and new authors.
Stories by: Micah Ackerman, Caddy Rowland, Monica La Porta, Sam Kates, Lanette Curington, Ela Lond, Livia Harper, Griffin Carmichael, Selina Fenech, Mark Gardner, Ellisa Barr, Marilyn Vix, Jean Louise, Sheryl Fawcett, Nathan Williams, K.D. Hendriks, Wendy C. Allenn (Eelkat), Lindy Moone, Andrew Ashling, David J. Normoyle, Jack Lusted, H.S. Stone, Craig Halloran, Cherise Kelley, George Berger, Jamie Campbell, Amelia Smith, H.S. St.Ours, Melisse Aires, Cora Buhlert, Philip Harris, Emily Martha Sorensen, Raquel Lyon, Samuel Clements, Dulce Rolindeax, Julie Ann Dawson, J.T. Hall, Roz Marshall, Vincent Trigili, J.E. Taylor, Hugh Howey, Samuel Peralta, Daniel R. Marvello, John L. Monk, Hudson Owen, Stella Wilkinson, Susan C. Daffron, Anya Kelly, Rachel Aukes, Anya Allyn, Zelah Meyer, Nicolas Wilson, Jennifer Lewis, Toni Dwiggins, Derek Neville, D.D. Parker, Keith Rowland, Ruth Nestvold, P.D. Singer, Quinn Richardson, Peter J. Michaels, Daniel Wallock, Thea Atkinson, Lisa Grace, Matt Ryan, Vanna Smythe, Geraldine Evans, MeiLin Miranda, Beverly Farr, Sarah L. Carter, Tony Bertauski, Edward M. Grant, Misti Wolanski, Erik Feka, Dee Gabbledon, Becca Price, Arrington Flynn, L.E. Parin, Darrin Perrez, Frank Zubek, Rachel Elizabeth Cole, Matthew W. Grant, Michael Coorlim, Maren Hayes, Tony Held, Allan Körbes, Tiffany Cherney, Landon Porter, Kathy Molyneaux, Drew Avera, SB Jones, Bob Summer, E.A. Linden, Sarra Cannon, Carol Kean, Kristy Tate, Jos van Brussel, John March, Nadia Nader, R.M. Prioleau, Joel Ansel
Get it for FREE at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Scribd and Inktera.
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My own contribution to the anthology is called “Heiligenloh”. It’s a contemporary romance set in this lovely North West German village.
I found the real Heiligenloh in much the same way that my hero Marco finds it, because of a detour due to the road closure while I was on my way to my teaching job at the University of Vechta. Humpe’s grocery store is a real place, too, and one where I frequently stopped for some groceries on the way home. Alas, the romance is entirely fictional.
This holiday season I mostly found myself tied to the house due to ongoing construction work. Which isn’t that much of a problem, since I do most of my holiday shopping online anyway.
However, yesterday there was a lull in the construction work, so I took the chance for a stroll over the Bremen Christmas Market. And since the weather was decent, I took my camera along: Continue reading
First of all, I’ve been interviewed by British crime fiction writer J.T. Baptiste for the 12 days of crime series on her blog. We talk about writing, reading, favourite characters, Edgar Wallace movies and Dr. Mabuse, who is one of my all-time favourite villains. Also keep checking back, because a new interview with a crime fiction writer will be posted every day until Christmas. Up today is John Hindmarsh.
Over at the Pegasus Pulp blog, I’ve also been talking about pulp speed and writing like the pulp writers of old.
In the meantime, Tuesday’s post about hard SF and messy emotions seems to have struck a nerve, because it sent my blog stats through the roof, largely due to links by the excellent blogs Dear Author, SF Signal and The Galaxy Express. Meanwhile, I was dealing with translation rush jobs, incapable workmen building a garage and also sort of vanished into putting the finishing touches on what will be the last two e-book releases of the year for me (official announcement coming soon), so I missed much of that.
However, the discussion didn’t stop, so here are some more links:
Angela Highland responds at her blog here. It’s certainly interesting how many of us had similar experiences in our relationship to romance. We bounced off the genre during the “bodiceripper” era, turned to SFF and finally came back fifteen years or so later to find that the romance genre had changed.
Coincidentally, I also find that for the past few years, the majority of SFF that I’m reading was written by women (and the occasional non-binary person), because in books by women I can usually find well-written female characters and the chance of coming across misogynist fuckwittery is much lower. It’s not that I don’t read SFF written by men, because I certainly do. But mostly I find that they’re either books by men I’ve been reading for years or whom I know personally or books that come highly recommended from trusted sources.
Athena Andreadis pointed me to this older post on her blog about hard science fiction and how it’s often not very scientific and also focusses only on particular sciences, namely physics and computer science, while e.g. biology is ignored, which explains why e.g. Larry Niven is considered a writer of hard SF, while Lois McMaster Bujold or Joan Slonczewski are not. As always, she makes some excellent points, including the what passes for hard SF these often fails on every other storytelling front.
As a matter of fact, the jargon-heaviness and info-dumpiness of bad hard SF has also begun to affect other genres and subgenres by now. A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, particularly the subgenre known as “prepper fiction”, expounds in great and exhaustive detail on the specs of guns, ammo and – less frequently – water purifiers to the point that a disagreement about a rifle scope almost led to a law suit. Meanwhile, certain Tom Clancy thrillers read like manuals for submarines and other military hardware to the point that I once said, “I translate tech specs for a living, so I’m certainly not reading them in leisure time unless I get paid for it.”
Meanwhile, Australian SFF writer Patty Jansen (who among other things also writes hard SF that’s actually good) sticks up for the romance genre and points out that writing contemporary romance is a great skill and that every writer should try it at least once, even if they never plan on publishing it. Because the fact that contemporary romance sticks to the “dull” mundane world (which isn’t necessarily all that dull, since I’ve read some great contemporary romance in fascinating settings that I knew little to nothing about) means that it’s a great way to learn about creating rounded and believable characters and relationships. And SF could certainly use more of that.
Kate Elliott also pointed out this post by Jared Shurin at Pornokitsch about five things that epic fantasy could learn from historical romance. Once again, this is a post by someone who either isn’t very familiar with the (historical) romance genre or at least hasn’t read it in a while and then suddenly comes (back) to the genre and finds a whole lot to enjoy there. I also find his comments on the different structure of series in SFF and romance interesting, because they very much mirror my own experiences upon returning to the romance genre.
I second his point on historical romance having women with agency rather than harping on “But this is historically accurate, because all women were chattel in the Middle Ages” like some authors of epic fantasy tend to do – never mind that it isn’t even true. Though he is mistaken that women in historical romance only exist to have sex. First of all, there are whole romance subgenres out there which do not have explicit sex (e.g. traditional regencies and Christian romances, many of which are historicals) and secondly, romance is a female-focussed genre where the main protagonist is normally the heroine. In fact, you could argue that the hero only exists so the heroine has someone to fall in love and have sex with, though in truth the heroes are usually well developed characters with lives, interests, adventures and families (brothers, lots of brothers) of their own.
I also agree with him about the sex, though not every romance subgenre contains the same amount of sex or even any sex at all. Not that historical romance sex can’t be a tad ridiculous (sheltered virgins experiencing multiple orgasms and giving oral sex on their first night out – not very likely), but at least the sex is mostly consensual (some rapey old-school “bodicerippers” notwithstanding) and generally depicted as a positive experience. Whereas certain epic fantasies of the grimdark kind make me wonder whether anybody in these worlds ever had regular consensual sex without money being exchanged and whether any woman in those worlds ever actually enjoyed sex.
Finally, just to prove that not all men are as enlightened with regard to romance as Jared Shurin, last week a prominent male author declared that he had personally revolutionised and reinvented the erotica romance genre. Unsurprisingly, several women disagreed and hijincks ensured.
At the newly launched Uncanny Magazine, Tansy Rayner Roberts asks “Does sex make science fiction ‘soft’?” Found via Pretty Terrible, the site formerly known as The Radish.
Now the debate about whether romance subplots water down science fiction is nothing new. It rears its ugly head every couple of months. Here is one example from last year. Continue reading
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