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Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Fiction


I guess it makes sense if I am going to try and revive and make public this blog, then I should at least post a summary of my fiction as it is available:



Dark Fiction Podcast


Five Gold Rings

(Part of themed Christmas podcast: 12 Days of Chrismtas).

Weaponizer


What The Stars Hold
Prospective Parliamentary Candidate No. 1
The Lady
Cut Now, Cut Deep

Telling of Tales: Podcast


The Gods Are Small Birds

Mythaxis


Blood & Souls
1. Survivor
2. No Survivor
When Gretchen Met Sally
Red Fever

Variety is the spice, and the spice must flow


To a degree this touches, perhaps tangentially, on yesterday’s topic of influence, still partly coming from the same conversation at Plan B book I mentioned. Three local science fiction writers spoke for the afternoon to a dozen or so people who turned up to listen – Richard Morgan, Gary Gibson and Hal Duncan. Morgan complained, as many people do, about how William Gibson has changed what he writes over the years, wishing that he would go back to the Sprawl style material. With the three of them at the discussion Gibson apparently is doing classic space opera, while Duncan does a more mixed up fiction, with Morgan having gone from noir cyberpunk of Altered Carbon to having a sword on the cover of Steel Remains. So I had asked about the idea of changing what you are writing – why did Morgan change, or did he change at all? What are the effects of labels/genres on how what you write is seen? I’ll not go to deeply into that, it’s a huge topic, as the resulting discussion demonstrated.


As far as Morgan was concerned he hadn’t changed genres, his writing was the same, for him there was little difference between Altered Carbon and Steel Remains. In fact, he indicated, it could be considered far future novel, scattering of wrecked technology, and post-apocalyptic setting with swords – certainly another classic science fiction idea. Duncan suggested that with his novels being a bit of everything it meant he could go in any direction next without getting persecuted by reader’s expectations. In the course of the conversation there was a suggestion that the lines had changed over the decades.


Like how in the past there was just alternative music where the same person would be listening to Einstruzende Neubauten and Sisters of Mercy, while now some would call one Industrial and the other Gothic. In the past science fiction and fantasy had murky boundaries, writers like Michael Moorcock (who came up in this conversation time and again), crossing the boundaries as though they weren’t there. To an extent it was suggested that there were politics involved in some of these changes – the believe of good and evil – but also regional leads, like how America and Europe have different politics/feelings on things, leading to different trends and definitions. Which I thought was an interesting thought, though not one I want to dwell on particularly at the moment passed this aside.


For me, I want to write something which is in the melting point, speculative or slip or whatever, I’d rather be writing something in the curiosity of the middle ground, than something which can be firmly pigeon holed at one end or the other. On the other hand, getting into fuzzy ground, I fear, makes life harder when it comes to pitching/selling your work. I suspect it’s easier to pinpoint a market when you are firmly able to pinpoint the publications/publishers who deal with a market.


This is a ramble, like most of these thoughts are, knocked out in stolen moments, and posted into the world for consideration as a thought, rather than anything else. Such that, I came up with an idea at the start of the piece and seem to have drifted as I’ve continued. So, to bring it back, spice, I’d rather spice my work with the variety of influence and end up with something exotic and hopefully a little different, than find myself at one end of a gully. But that’s just how I am, I’ve said it for years, I am an explorer, I look for the exception, not the rule, I look for variety not genre.


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