David’s Comments (group member since Jun 11, 2007)

David’s comments from the The Guttering Flame group.

It wasn't the gorilla wedding that ruined Superman. It's the quiet impression you get that this is a recurring plot.

Transmetropolitan is to me more proof of something I've had to accept as gospel. The characters of your story will drive it's popularity more than any other aspect. Give me your Harry Potters, your Elminsters, and your Spyders and I'll give your huddled masses worlds whose holes are paved over in a layer of pure characterization. These are not places where you should go looking under rocks and behind corners. Watch the people, look fast, follow the action, and be dazzled by the lights.

Don't look for the time turners or the single hard drive that stores every bit of data around, and you'll never feel let down.

A man looks away for ten minutes and a fascinating conversation explodes on him.

First, I must agree with Keely, and how unexpected. There is no need to separate the books we hand to children and literature. The entire genre of Young Adult fiction is in itself a fiction. It’s a category on the shelves. Look who reads Harry Potter. Most of the Serial Fantasy novels aren’t even YA novels. They’re classified as Adult Fiction.

Yet, still there is so terribly little there. Quick divergence.

One of my friends, a man by the name (last) of Kempenich is busy writing a novel. I don’t know how many pages now, somewhere around fifty.

He really likes talking with me about it. About the culture, the plot, the characters. Every time we do, “I think new things about the things I think about”, he tells me. I spent the evening talking him out of naming the secret group of Assassins-for-Hire in his world “The Brethren”. This was one of the easy sells. Mostly, he just hasn’t thought about the implications of what he does. This “literature”, these books, are written for adults, by adults. Those of us who suffer through them deal with it by pretending it’s all read by “Children”.

Resumption.

I used to read Forgotten Realms books. I did so because I had some Forgotten Realms D&D material. I quiet when I discovered fiction written by Authors who didn’t have the constraints that are placed on what are literally “Main-Line” Novels. If you think Superman can’t really die, look at Drizzt.

I spend a fair chunk of my time keeping up on Publishing. It deserves a capital, because I’m staring down the throat of big business. Big business sells what sells. Good books and bad. Really, it sells what has name recognition. The problem is, name recognition doesn’t come from cycling through a lot of new authors, panning for gold. It comes from selling already popular titles.

This is why there is, mostly in Fantasy and Sci Fi, a certain drag. There is a huge collection of good, solid, excellent short fiction in the genre each year, but publishers are willing to risk a short piece.

On the subject of consistency in the main-line work. That’s for editors. Yes, the stories are consistent, but the world isn’t. DragonLance, for example, is obsessed with steel. Their coins are made of this "precious" metal. Ignoring the fact that no one would EVER make a coin out of steel, for a dozen good metallurgic reasons, no one in the book ever seems to comment on its shortage. Maybe a few lines, but it’s not there. Steel is supposed to be color, but it comes of as not colorful.

Authors of Fantasy Literature don’t, for the most part, understand the influences on them that sculpt their often pseudo-medieval world. Keely said they pat themselves for reinventing the wheel. I’d say most stroke themselves.

I read non-fiction these days. I’m consistently surprised by the craziness, the richness, of our world. There are concepts that I’d have been floored to read about in a fantasy novel happening daily in Bombay. Baby Renters, who rent babies by the hour to beggars.

Writing good fantasy should require the most work of almost any literature. Consistently, I find it’s taking the least. That alone is the problem with it.