Marketing is an issue for most authors these days, not just for those like me who self-publish. Only those lucky enough to be given full support from a big publisher can sit back and let it happen, but they are the chosen few. The costs of extensive advertising, and of paying bookstores to feature books in displays, are beyond the reach of individuals or small publishers, and even the big publishers have to be selective.
So the great majority of authors have to spend time on boosting their own chances of success. The traditional routes are well known, the main one being to send out review copies to all appropriate paper and electronic journals (but there are far more books than there are review slots, and well-known authors and big publishers tend to take precedence). The internet permits other alternatives, such as websites, MySpace, blogs like this one, and book discussion forums (although most of the forums understandably take a dim view of authors trying to promote their own work). Perhaps one of the best routes, particularly for those of us who use POD publishing and rely on on-line sales, is to accumulate a lot of reviews from satisfied readers on amazon. Even that has its downside, however, with the unscrupulous getting their friends and family to post glowing reviews (something which amazon is trying to address). There is also, of course, a Catch-22 with amazon reviews: getting many good ones probably boosts sales a lot, but since only a tiny percentage of readers bothers to comment, you need a lot of sales before you can get those reviews.
The problem for authors is that however much effort you put into marketing, the results are completely unpredictable. I have been reflecting on this lately due to the varied fortunes of my two novels. At the time that the first one, 'The Foresight War', was published at the end of 2004, I knew little about fiction publishing, and decided to self-publish because I wanted to hit a particular publication date (the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War 2). I put very little effort into marketing: a few review copies, a few mentions on websites, and that was all. Yet the book started selling immediately and has sold steadily ever since. Despite the fact that I paid for a full service from my publishers (Authors Online), profits from book sales recovered those costs some time ago and continue to deliver a small but steady income.
For my second novel, 'Scales', I was much more organised. To minimise the costs, I did more of the preparatory work myself (and a special thank-you to Oleg Volk, who designed the cover for me), and I took a much more systematic approach to marketing, sending out a lot more review copies and providing details to many different booksellers. I was even lucky enough to be interviewed for a podcast on 'The Writing Show', as I described in an earlier post. However, the book's sales since its publication earlier this year have so far been depressingly slow. More experienced self-published authors tell me that this is normal, that I should be patient, and that I was lucky the first time, but I can't help thinking that something more than luck is involved.
One possible variable is of course the quality of the work, but I doubt that is a factor. 'The Foresight War' is actually weak on some of the usual elements of fiction, particularly characterisation, because I wrote it in order to explore ideas about an alternative World War 2, so the characters are mainly there to carry the plot. 'Scales' is much more focused on the principal character (and the story is told in the first person to emphasise this), and the feedback I have had from those who have read both is that it is a much better novel. It did get off to an unfortunate start with one reviewer who took a great dislike to it (it happens; something which all authors have to live with) but the few reviews posted since then have been much more favourable.
The conclusion which I have come to is that it is the plot which makes the difference. While 'The Foresight War' is probably of little interest to most readers of fiction, it appeals strongly to those fascinated by the Second World War, and particularly those who enjoy discussing the "what ifs" of that conflict. There are discussion forums which focus on just that, and their members are interested in hearing about novels on the subject. In fact, there aren't that many novels published which deal with such 'alternative WW2' scenarios, so there is little competition.
'Scales', on the other hand, fits into the mainstream SF category. It's set in the present day and concerns what happens to a man who acquires non-human characteristics and abilities as a result of an accident. It is, I am told, much more interesting and enjoyable for non-WW2 enthusiasts than 'The Foresight War'. However, it is battling for attention with countless others and, being self-published, has a much lower profile. It's simply getting lost in the sea of fiction.
So what lessons can be drawn from this?
The first is that success (particularly for self-published works) is more likely if a story appeals to a niche market which can be identified and reached.
The second is that it is easier to build sales if succeeding novels are in the same genre; and easier still if they form a series, which is why publishers like authors to write sequels to successful novels.
Finally, a philosophical approach is required. Most novels (whether traditionally or self-published) lose money, which is why publishers put such a lot of effort into identifying and promoting the few best-sellers which make all of the profit.
To sum up; write if you must, publish if you can, market as vigorously as you feel able to, but keep your expectations low and be prepared to be very patient and persistent!
Showing posts with label SFF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SFF. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 September 2007
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
Science Fiction, Fantasy, or…?
Some questions which are often debated: what is the difference between science fiction and fantasy, how do they relate to mainstream fiction, and is this changing?
The flip answer to the first question is that anything with spaceships is SF, anything with magic is fantasy. This is generally true, but James Schmitz's wonderful 'The Witches of Karres' includes both. A more considered view is that at least some attempt is made in SF to convince the reader that the story just possibly might happen, but in fantasy anything goes (although internal consistency is still required). The distinction is very clear at the extremes: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is obviously SF, Tolkien is obviously fantasy. However, as is often the case, there is a big grey area in between.
Some stories seem to be pure fantasy, such as Ann McCaffrey's 'Dragonflight', but she slips in a reference to the colonisation of the planet which gives it some kind of SF justification. It is not uncommon to find stories like which are a mixture of SF and fantasy elements (as instanced by Orson Scott Card's 'A Planet Called Treason', reviewed below).
The distinctions are further confused by the fact that both genres are subdivided. Some of the subdivisions are concerned with the type of plot, such as 'space opera', which tells you to expect galactic empires and battling fleets of spaceships, and 'epic fantasy', usually concerned with quests vital to the future of the world, for the mythological all-powerful grail/ring/sword (delete as appropriate). However, some sub-genres are more subtle and less clear-cut.
SF is often divided into 'hard' and 'soft', but different opinions can be found as to the precise distinction between them. Some apply the academic test: 'hard' is to do with the natural sciences (focusing on physics, chemistry, biology and technology in general), 'soft' to do with the social sciences (psychology, sociology, the impact of the future on humanity). Obviously, it's a question of balance; most SF will include something of both. A different view regards 'hard SF' as excluding technology which current science regards as impossible: sub-light-speed interstellar travel using generation ships or frozen sleep is acceptable, faster-than-light starships or artificial/anti-gravity machines are not. Time travel and psionic abilities such as telepathy and teleportation (all traditional SF themes), are also excluded from this definition of 'hard SF'. A further complication is the recent promotion of 'mundane SF', which is harder than hard: it excludes interstellar travel and aliens, and is restricted to known science within our solar system. At this point it may be difficult to distinguish SF from some mainstream fiction such as those thrillers which are set slightly in the future and include yet-to-be-built technology.
Fantasy also has its subgenres. Epic fantasy has already been mentioned, but there is also contemporary (or urban) fantasy, set on Earth in the present day, while vampire and horror fiction are also subgenres. In fact, some fantasy supporters claim that SF itself is just a subgenre of fantasy, although a more acceptable overarching term for SFF is 'speculative fiction' which also includes the genre of alternate worlds (which examine what might have happened in history if critical events had turned out differently).
Mainstream fiction is often described by its supporters as 'literary' or 'serious' fiction: terms clearly intended to be dismissive of all genre fiction (not just SFF). This literary snobbery would be amusing if it weren't so sad. It harks back to an earlier age, when the stereotypical SF fan was a geeky adolescent and his reading matter was a comic with a cover featuring rocket ships and/or scantily-clothed busty women being threatened by alien monsters. This view of SFF as being 'not serious' and 'intended for adolescents' has probably only been reinforced by the success of the Star Wars and Harry Potter films.
Not that there is anything wrong with having fun. There can be joyousness in a good space opera or fantasy which is usually missing from mainstream fiction, as well as the famous 'sense of wonder' evoked by a compelling far-future vision (although that is harder to generate than it used to be in the golden age of SF, when lots of ideas first emerged). While early works might have been somewhat lacking in writing quality, much modern SFF is beautifully written, fully comparable with the 'literary' works. Furthermore, modern SF often deals with themes which are far bigger than the interpersonal relationships which so dominate the mainstream. Themes such as how humanity will be affected by the rapid growth of cyberspace, against the background of a world in which we are using up the resources and changing our environment at an accelerating rate. Arguably, such fiction is a lot more serious and important than the relatively trivial concerns of most of the mainstream.
While fantasy and space operas will always be essentially escapist (and long may they continue – we need some respite from reality from time to time), it seems possible that the gap between mainstream fiction and the more serious end of SF will narrow even further in the future, as the predicted developments in cyberspace and changes to our planet's environment become part of the backdrop to our lives. Established mainstream authors have already written novels with SF themes, for example P.D. James' 'Children of Men', recently turned into a feature film, although they are usually careful to avoid the results being categorised as genre fiction. At the moment such crossovers are uncommon, although I suspect that they might increase. Perhaps we will see a return to works comparable with Orwell's '1984' or Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' – a merger between SF themes and the literary mainstream. In which case, 'mundane SF' could have a big future.
The flip answer to the first question is that anything with spaceships is SF, anything with magic is fantasy. This is generally true, but James Schmitz's wonderful 'The Witches of Karres' includes both. A more considered view is that at least some attempt is made in SF to convince the reader that the story just possibly might happen, but in fantasy anything goes (although internal consistency is still required). The distinction is very clear at the extremes: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is obviously SF, Tolkien is obviously fantasy. However, as is often the case, there is a big grey area in between.
Some stories seem to be pure fantasy, such as Ann McCaffrey's 'Dragonflight', but she slips in a reference to the colonisation of the planet which gives it some kind of SF justification. It is not uncommon to find stories like which are a mixture of SF and fantasy elements (as instanced by Orson Scott Card's 'A Planet Called Treason', reviewed below).
The distinctions are further confused by the fact that both genres are subdivided. Some of the subdivisions are concerned with the type of plot, such as 'space opera', which tells you to expect galactic empires and battling fleets of spaceships, and 'epic fantasy', usually concerned with quests vital to the future of the world, for the mythological all-powerful grail/ring/sword (delete as appropriate). However, some sub-genres are more subtle and less clear-cut.
SF is often divided into 'hard' and 'soft', but different opinions can be found as to the precise distinction between them. Some apply the academic test: 'hard' is to do with the natural sciences (focusing on physics, chemistry, biology and technology in general), 'soft' to do with the social sciences (psychology, sociology, the impact of the future on humanity). Obviously, it's a question of balance; most SF will include something of both. A different view regards 'hard SF' as excluding technology which current science regards as impossible: sub-light-speed interstellar travel using generation ships or frozen sleep is acceptable, faster-than-light starships or artificial/anti-gravity machines are not. Time travel and psionic abilities such as telepathy and teleportation (all traditional SF themes), are also excluded from this definition of 'hard SF'. A further complication is the recent promotion of 'mundane SF', which is harder than hard: it excludes interstellar travel and aliens, and is restricted to known science within our solar system. At this point it may be difficult to distinguish SF from some mainstream fiction such as those thrillers which are set slightly in the future and include yet-to-be-built technology.
Fantasy also has its subgenres. Epic fantasy has already been mentioned, but there is also contemporary (or urban) fantasy, set on Earth in the present day, while vampire and horror fiction are also subgenres. In fact, some fantasy supporters claim that SF itself is just a subgenre of fantasy, although a more acceptable overarching term for SFF is 'speculative fiction' which also includes the genre of alternate worlds (which examine what might have happened in history if critical events had turned out differently).
Mainstream fiction is often described by its supporters as 'literary' or 'serious' fiction: terms clearly intended to be dismissive of all genre fiction (not just SFF). This literary snobbery would be amusing if it weren't so sad. It harks back to an earlier age, when the stereotypical SF fan was a geeky adolescent and his reading matter was a comic with a cover featuring rocket ships and/or scantily-clothed busty women being threatened by alien monsters. This view of SFF as being 'not serious' and 'intended for adolescents' has probably only been reinforced by the success of the Star Wars and Harry Potter films.
Not that there is anything wrong with having fun. There can be joyousness in a good space opera or fantasy which is usually missing from mainstream fiction, as well as the famous 'sense of wonder' evoked by a compelling far-future vision (although that is harder to generate than it used to be in the golden age of SF, when lots of ideas first emerged). While early works might have been somewhat lacking in writing quality, much modern SFF is beautifully written, fully comparable with the 'literary' works. Furthermore, modern SF often deals with themes which are far bigger than the interpersonal relationships which so dominate the mainstream. Themes such as how humanity will be affected by the rapid growth of cyberspace, against the background of a world in which we are using up the resources and changing our environment at an accelerating rate. Arguably, such fiction is a lot more serious and important than the relatively trivial concerns of most of the mainstream.
While fantasy and space operas will always be essentially escapist (and long may they continue – we need some respite from reality from time to time), it seems possible that the gap between mainstream fiction and the more serious end of SF will narrow even further in the future, as the predicted developments in cyberspace and changes to our planet's environment become part of the backdrop to our lives. Established mainstream authors have already written novels with SF themes, for example P.D. James' 'Children of Men', recently turned into a feature film, although they are usually careful to avoid the results being categorised as genre fiction. At the moment such crossovers are uncommon, although I suspect that they might increase. Perhaps we will see a return to works comparable with Orwell's '1984' or Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' – a merger between SF themes and the literary mainstream. In which case, 'mundane SF' could have a big future.
Sunday, 5 August 2007
The length of SF novels – quantity vs quality?
Books are getting fatter – and have been doing so for decades. When I first started reading SF in the late 1950s, the typical full-length novel was no more than 200 pages long (about 80,000 words). This remained generally true throughout the 1960s but then books began to expand, resulting in today's doorstops. Clearly, the genre has something to do with it; Tolkien set a standard in the length of fantasy novels (as in so many other respects) and it seems today that no fantasy can be regarded as serious unless the story fills up at least a trilogy. However, SF has followed the trend, albeit more slowly. The question is – does quantity equal quality? Are today's novels better for being so much longer?
First some definitions, as "story length" can be a slippery concept. The stand-alone single-volume works are obvious, but the multi-volume ones less so. Some of them are simply one continuous story divided into several volumes for production or marketing convenience (e.g. 'The Lord of the Rings'). Others follow the same characters and occur in a chronological sequence, but each story is self-contained with its own ending (crime series featuring the same detective are the best example; in SFF the 'Harry Potter' books also qualify). Finally, there are the self-contained stories set within a universe created by the author, but they may feature different characters and don't occur in any particular sequence (e.g. Iain Banks' 'Culture' series). As always with such classifications, there are grey areas; for example, Catherine Asaro's 'Skolian Empire' series, in which the stories feature different principal characters and are not in chronological order, but the characters are all members of the same family and all appear in most of the books.
Anyway, for the purpose of this exercise I count each self-contained, continuous story as one work, regardless of whether it is published in one volume or several.
I will not spend much time on fantasy, as it is clear that its appeal is rather different to that of SF (acknowledging yet again that there are grey areas!). There is a strong market for escapist fantasies (usually with medieval and magical elements) in which readers can lose themselves, and the longer they go on, the better they like it. The painstaking creation of an elaborate world, usually with its own maps, genealogies, laws and customs, is an important part of the appeal. In some cases this can be obsessive; I have read of many Harry Potter fans who have no interest in reading any other fantasies, all they care about is the world which Rowling has created. It is significant that while the first in that series was short by modern standards (just over 220 pages), this rose in successive volumes to 256, then 320, then jumped to over 600 and finally to more than 700 pages. Clearly, her fans just can't get enough.
I want instead to focus on SF. Let's look at some of the longer works. Frank Herbert's 'Dune' was one of the first really successful long novels, running to around 500 pages (including appendices). Most books remained of more modest size for a long time (for example, Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' is less than 300 pages), but in recent years the length has been growing. Iain M Banks' books vary but the longest are around 500 pages, Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy runs to around 450 pages each, Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire Upon the Deep' is 600 pages while the prequel, 'A Deepness in the Sky' clocks up 750. Alastair Reynolds' works are in the 500-600+ range, while John Meaney's Nulapeiron trilogy (one continuous story) runs at 500-600 pages each.
Compare these with some of the classics: Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' is just 195 pages in my edition, Asimov's epic 'Foundation Trilogy' runs to 170-190 pages per volume, Arthur C Clarke's 'Childhood's End' is 190, Hal Clement's 'Mission of Gravity' is just over 200, Zelazny's 'This Immortal' is 186, Pohl & Kornbluth's 'The Space Merchants' is 170, Erik Frank Russell's 'The Great Explosion' is under 150, A E Van Vogt's 'The Weapon Shops of Isher' is less than 130 and Jack Vance's 'The Dragon Masters' is just 122 pages long. These were typical lengths for SF novels of the period.
Are the new doorstops that much better than the old masters of only a third of the length? Certainly the experience is different; the reader looks for a more detailed environment, more character development, and more complex plotting, and the best authors deliver this. 'Dune' is rightly praised and Herbert creates a compelling world, packed full of fascinating concepts and characters. However, I find that in many cases the extra detail just slows down the plot and dilutes the experience. I started Kim Stanley Robinson's award-winning 'Mars' trilogy by reading 'Red Mars' (400 pages) but found that the author's fascination with building up his description of the colonisation of the planet came at the cost of an engaging plot and characters I could care about, and didn't read the other volumes. I did manage the first two of Baxter's 'Manifold' trilogy, but found them a real effort to slog through and gave up before the third. Reynold's books are also hard work – I have had a couple on my shelf for many months, but have to work up to reading those, with long gaps in between. Meaney's 'Nulapeiron' trilogy did keep me engaged (a remarkable achievement considering the total of 600,000+ words), but I still finished each volume with a sense of relief, and will not be re-reading them for a very long time – if ever.
A good short novel delivers a faster pace, a punchier message and has all the more impact for the fact that it can be read in one or two sessions instead of being spread out over a week or more. The 'wow' factor so important in SF is also more concentrated; it has been rightly observed that 'The Stars My Destination' contains so many ideas that a modern author would spread them over at least three times as many pages. Would such an extended version be better? I doubt that very much – an important part of the story's appeal is its exhilarating pace.
I think that the 200 page novel is roughly equivalent to the 100 minute feature film, in that you can concentrate fully on the story without getting restless. 300 pages / 150 minutes is about the limit to absorb in one go. Much more than that and endurance begins to become a factor, and that eats away at enjoyment.
My time is precious and I don't like to waste it. If I'm going to take the time to read a 600 page novel, then I expect a great deal more of it than I would of a 200 page story. Sadly, I find that few of the long books really justify the extra time they take to read. Many of them leave me feeling dissatisfied, and I stop reading books before reaching the end far more often than I used to. The modern emphasis in SF seems to be on improving its literary respectability by emphasising character development over plot. Believable characters who the reader can relate to are certainly essential to the enjoyment of any story, but that doesn't take hundreds of pages to achieve.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but to me SF is just as much – if not more so – about ideas as about characterisation, and is particularly well-suited to the fast-paced, punchy thriller. I like to have my imagination stretched – it's why I read SF in the first place. Sadly, I am nowadays too often bored instead.
First some definitions, as "story length" can be a slippery concept. The stand-alone single-volume works are obvious, but the multi-volume ones less so. Some of them are simply one continuous story divided into several volumes for production or marketing convenience (e.g. 'The Lord of the Rings'). Others follow the same characters and occur in a chronological sequence, but each story is self-contained with its own ending (crime series featuring the same detective are the best example; in SFF the 'Harry Potter' books also qualify). Finally, there are the self-contained stories set within a universe created by the author, but they may feature different characters and don't occur in any particular sequence (e.g. Iain Banks' 'Culture' series). As always with such classifications, there are grey areas; for example, Catherine Asaro's 'Skolian Empire' series, in which the stories feature different principal characters and are not in chronological order, but the characters are all members of the same family and all appear in most of the books.
Anyway, for the purpose of this exercise I count each self-contained, continuous story as one work, regardless of whether it is published in one volume or several.
I will not spend much time on fantasy, as it is clear that its appeal is rather different to that of SF (acknowledging yet again that there are grey areas!). There is a strong market for escapist fantasies (usually with medieval and magical elements) in which readers can lose themselves, and the longer they go on, the better they like it. The painstaking creation of an elaborate world, usually with its own maps, genealogies, laws and customs, is an important part of the appeal. In some cases this can be obsessive; I have read of many Harry Potter fans who have no interest in reading any other fantasies, all they care about is the world which Rowling has created. It is significant that while the first in that series was short by modern standards (just over 220 pages), this rose in successive volumes to 256, then 320, then jumped to over 600 and finally to more than 700 pages. Clearly, her fans just can't get enough.
I want instead to focus on SF. Let's look at some of the longer works. Frank Herbert's 'Dune' was one of the first really successful long novels, running to around 500 pages (including appendices). Most books remained of more modest size for a long time (for example, Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' is less than 300 pages), but in recent years the length has been growing. Iain M Banks' books vary but the longest are around 500 pages, Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy runs to around 450 pages each, Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire Upon the Deep' is 600 pages while the prequel, 'A Deepness in the Sky' clocks up 750. Alastair Reynolds' works are in the 500-600+ range, while John Meaney's Nulapeiron trilogy (one continuous story) runs at 500-600 pages each.
Compare these with some of the classics: Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' is just 195 pages in my edition, Asimov's epic 'Foundation Trilogy' runs to 170-190 pages per volume, Arthur C Clarke's 'Childhood's End' is 190, Hal Clement's 'Mission of Gravity' is just over 200, Zelazny's 'This Immortal' is 186, Pohl & Kornbluth's 'The Space Merchants' is 170, Erik Frank Russell's 'The Great Explosion' is under 150, A E Van Vogt's 'The Weapon Shops of Isher' is less than 130 and Jack Vance's 'The Dragon Masters' is just 122 pages long. These were typical lengths for SF novels of the period.
Are the new doorstops that much better than the old masters of only a third of the length? Certainly the experience is different; the reader looks for a more detailed environment, more character development, and more complex plotting, and the best authors deliver this. 'Dune' is rightly praised and Herbert creates a compelling world, packed full of fascinating concepts and characters. However, I find that in many cases the extra detail just slows down the plot and dilutes the experience. I started Kim Stanley Robinson's award-winning 'Mars' trilogy by reading 'Red Mars' (400 pages) but found that the author's fascination with building up his description of the colonisation of the planet came at the cost of an engaging plot and characters I could care about, and didn't read the other volumes. I did manage the first two of Baxter's 'Manifold' trilogy, but found them a real effort to slog through and gave up before the third. Reynold's books are also hard work – I have had a couple on my shelf for many months, but have to work up to reading those, with long gaps in between. Meaney's 'Nulapeiron' trilogy did keep me engaged (a remarkable achievement considering the total of 600,000+ words), but I still finished each volume with a sense of relief, and will not be re-reading them for a very long time – if ever.
A good short novel delivers a faster pace, a punchier message and has all the more impact for the fact that it can be read in one or two sessions instead of being spread out over a week or more. The 'wow' factor so important in SF is also more concentrated; it has been rightly observed that 'The Stars My Destination' contains so many ideas that a modern author would spread them over at least three times as many pages. Would such an extended version be better? I doubt that very much – an important part of the story's appeal is its exhilarating pace.
I think that the 200 page novel is roughly equivalent to the 100 minute feature film, in that you can concentrate fully on the story without getting restless. 300 pages / 150 minutes is about the limit to absorb in one go. Much more than that and endurance begins to become a factor, and that eats away at enjoyment.
My time is precious and I don't like to waste it. If I'm going to take the time to read a 600 page novel, then I expect a great deal more of it than I would of a 200 page story. Sadly, I find that few of the long books really justify the extra time they take to read. Many of them leave me feeling dissatisfied, and I stop reading books before reaching the end far more often than I used to. The modern emphasis in SF seems to be on improving its literary respectability by emphasising character development over plot. Believable characters who the reader can relate to are certainly essential to the enjoyment of any story, but that doesn't take hundreds of pages to achieve.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but to me SF is just as much – if not more so – about ideas as about characterisation, and is particularly well-suited to the fast-paced, punchy thriller. I like to have my imagination stretched – it's why I read SF in the first place. Sadly, I am nowadays too often bored instead.
Thursday, 26 July 2007
SF and the prophets of doom
Deborah Orr, a regular columnist in The Independent newspaper, has written an interesting piece (in the 25/7/07 edition) on the place of science fiction and fantasy in modern literature, with particular reference to dystopian thinking in general and the disasters (actual and potential) of modern life in particular.
Her starting point is the attitude people have to such major problems, especially the way in which we try to interpret events in a way which suits our preconceptions while resisting any implications which run counter to them. Climate change is a good example of this, with the evidence being seen through the filter of politico-economic beliefs. Those who firmly believe in the rightness of the untrammelled free market style of capitalism are unable to accept the implications of the theory of human-caused climate change and tend to regard it as some kind of socialist conspiracy (this is my paraphrase of her argument).
She refers to Black Mass, the latest book by the philosopher John Gray, in which he traces the history of Western millenarianism – the belief in some ideal future society. He suggests that the Iraq war is the result of an apocalyptic fantasy that it is possible to achieve by force a dramatic change, in this case in the direction of liberal democracy. He argues that all such projects will inevitably end in tears, and blames utopian thinking for believing that they are possible. Instead, he argues that we need more dystopian thinking, and should be paying more attention to such works as Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Wells' Island of Dr Moreau or Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Other suggested works, perhaps less familiar (at least to yrs trly), are Zamiatin's We, Nabokov's Bend Sinister, Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Ballard's Super-Cannes.
Orr argues that SF, formerly not taken seriously by the literary establishment, is now achieving a degree of credibility to the extent that such SF themes are now becoming part of the mainstream fiction. She points to Pulitzer Prize-winning (and, more significantly, Oprah-approved) Cormac McCarthy's The Road, concerning a post-climate catastrophe USA, and Sarah Hall's The Carhultan Army, "a futuristic fantasy in which a group of radical feminists make a stand in Britain against a repressive, authoritarian economic collapse", as well as recent works by Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing. Even children's fantasy is not immune; Orr refers to Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, set in the aftermath of a future war. However, she points out that all three of these books contain their own wish-fulfilling optimism which indicates the problems which we are going to have in changing our attitudes sufficiently to be able to divert the perilous course being taken by our civilisation.
I can recall various SFF stories (apart from the novels mentioned above) which have been been truly dystopic, just getting worse until the grim ending. However, these rarely seem to be very popular - they're admired at best, rather than liked. The problem, I suspect, is that people cling on to hope, to the belief that even if everything isn't all right on the night, at least there is room for optimism. But is Orr right? Are we too optimistic for our own good? Or would a diet of unbroken pessimism just pitch us into apathetic despair?
Her starting point is the attitude people have to such major problems, especially the way in which we try to interpret events in a way which suits our preconceptions while resisting any implications which run counter to them. Climate change is a good example of this, with the evidence being seen through the filter of politico-economic beliefs. Those who firmly believe in the rightness of the untrammelled free market style of capitalism are unable to accept the implications of the theory of human-caused climate change and tend to regard it as some kind of socialist conspiracy (this is my paraphrase of her argument).
She refers to Black Mass, the latest book by the philosopher John Gray, in which he traces the history of Western millenarianism – the belief in some ideal future society. He suggests that the Iraq war is the result of an apocalyptic fantasy that it is possible to achieve by force a dramatic change, in this case in the direction of liberal democracy. He argues that all such projects will inevitably end in tears, and blames utopian thinking for believing that they are possible. Instead, he argues that we need more dystopian thinking, and should be paying more attention to such works as Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Wells' Island of Dr Moreau or Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Other suggested works, perhaps less familiar (at least to yrs trly), are Zamiatin's We, Nabokov's Bend Sinister, Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Ballard's Super-Cannes.
Orr argues that SF, formerly not taken seriously by the literary establishment, is now achieving a degree of credibility to the extent that such SF themes are now becoming part of the mainstream fiction. She points to Pulitzer Prize-winning (and, more significantly, Oprah-approved) Cormac McCarthy's The Road, concerning a post-climate catastrophe USA, and Sarah Hall's The Carhultan Army, "a futuristic fantasy in which a group of radical feminists make a stand in Britain against a repressive, authoritarian economic collapse", as well as recent works by Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing. Even children's fantasy is not immune; Orr refers to Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, set in the aftermath of a future war. However, she points out that all three of these books contain their own wish-fulfilling optimism which indicates the problems which we are going to have in changing our attitudes sufficiently to be able to divert the perilous course being taken by our civilisation.
I can recall various SFF stories (apart from the novels mentioned above) which have been been truly dystopic, just getting worse until the grim ending. However, these rarely seem to be very popular - they're admired at best, rather than liked. The problem, I suspect, is that people cling on to hope, to the belief that even if everything isn't all right on the night, at least there is room for optimism. But is Orr right? Are we too optimistic for our own good? Or would a diet of unbroken pessimism just pitch us into apathetic despair?
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