There Comes a Prophet, by David Litwack

I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, I enjoyed the writing stylistically. This novel was published by a small publisher, though, so one can expect it to be edited and free from errors. There were some errors, however, though not enough to bother me, and I can be picky. On the other hand, much about it was disappointing.

::SPOILERS::

Plot Summary: A thousand years ago the Temple of Light took over, banning everything that would remind people of the time before (our time, plus perhaps some more advances in technology). The people live as they did in the olden days (I purposefully use a vague term here; the descriptions were lacking) with people who work as weavers and shoemakers. In order to enforce their power and the rejection of what they call the Darkness, the Temple periodically takes a youth and gives them a "teaching;" which amounts to psychological torture lasting several weeks. When the youth's spirit is broken, they return them to their village to be an example to the rest. Which actually sounds a lot harsher and scarier put like that that it actually was in the novel, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, the three main characters, Orah, Thomas, and Nathaniel, are all around the age of teaching, and Thomas gets chosen. When he returns he's in bad shape, so when Orah gets chosen next, Nathaniel decides to go after her.


The problem I have with the novel is that it was lackluster. There's only one part that really held my attention, and that was in the first third when Orah is taken and Nathaniel goes to save her. That was compelling. Otherwise, this novel really illustrates the need for authors to put their characters in dire situations that seem impossible to escape. Most of the time in this novel, that was not the case. Thomas's teaching, while certainly a sucky experience, was hard for me to really imagine as soul-crushing. They have him in a solitary cell. It's dark. Occasionally they show him images of  nuclear weapons going off, so he learns what the Darkness was all about. Yes, this is a nasty experience, especially for a nice kid who's been raised in a small village where the worst thing that happened was probably a bad winter. But not having experienced solitary confinement myself, I have little understanding of what it does to your mind. Perhaps if the author had gone further in his descriptions... I don't know. You're repeated reassured that no physical harm will come to the character. You know that the period of teaching will end and he'll get to go home. It's just not dire enough.

Even when the characters went to find the Keep, and it looked like the clever arch bishop might be tracking them, they handily get rid of the tracker. No tension there anymore. They find the Keep and spend a leisurely summer looking up things like mathematics. Not exactly nail-biting stuff. Litwack hinted that Thomas might betray his friends, and in the end he sort of does, but only by denying he wanted to go to the Keep with them. I thought he was going to do something far more drastic, like call the vicars. Then it would have been fascinating to see him struggle with what he'd done and all that. So things just never reach any sort of a real peak. It seemed to me that the novel was a platform for the author's views, which many novels are. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, but that's kind of *all* this novel was, in my experience.

As for the characters, they were not developed enough. Each of the main characters only had two or three qualities that defined them, and most of the time the author just told you what they were without going into detail. Nathaniel's a dreamer. He used to dream about knights. He's brave. Orah's the planner. She's also a leader. Thomas used to be the sweet musician, then after his teaching he's the scared sweet musician. He likes food and is good at climbing. Any secondary characters get next to no detail at all. To be fully developed and interesting, characters need a lot more going on. I was really interested when the author started to describe Orah's life as a weaver. I wish there had been a lot more of that. It might have made me care about her more. But more than that, none of them seemed to have real dreams. Nathaniel wants to... explore the mountain pass? That's his big dream? Be a knight, I guess. Although that's implied more than shown. Orah wants...? Nathaniel, eventually, I guess. But not much else. Why does she even care about the Keep? Is it because she got chosen for a teaching and wants to bring the Temple down out of... revenge?

No--such an emotion is too dark and extreme for the characters in this book. They are just nice kids who stumble onto a puzzle and walk a really long time, then get exposed to some education that opens their minds to possibilities. It's not enough to warrant the revolution they decide to bring on. It just isn't. Nobody ever went to war because they thought the populace needed to know that a thousand years ago people were capable of star travel. People become revolutionaries when their children are starving to death.*

So as much as I'd like to rate this novel higher because I appreciate stylistically good writing, I just can't. I hope in his future writing David Litwack raises the stakes and pushes the limits of how far he'll take his characters. It doesn't have to be as brutal as The Hunger Games, but make me believe they're really in danger! :)

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*Or when the British overtax them and restrict their "right" to take land from Native Americans. But that was sort of an anomaly, as revolutions go.

The Conundrum of Ender's Game

Anyone who is interested in sci fi and LGBT issues, and has access to the internet, has probably already heard about the boycott against Ender's Game, the movie based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, opening tonight. A lot of people are very excited for the movie. As I understand it, the novel is very good. My ex-husband certainly liked it a lot. I have never read it, but I do know a little about it from what he told me.

All things being equal, I love sci fi and often wish there were more shows and movies out there to see. So I would have been happy to go see Ender's Game. However, there's a problem. Orson Scott Card is not only a vocal opponent of LGBTQA rights, but he puts his money where his mouth is. So essentially, paying to see Ender's Game means making a contribution to a vehement homophobe's campaign to keep gay marriage illegal and even criminalize homosexuality. Of course, now that his novel is being made into a film and the world has started to discuss his views and actions, Card is claiming he's backing off. He's demanding that everyone show tolerance for his past statements and actions. Which is like Napoleon asking everyone to forget he once took over most of Europe after he was sent to Elba.*

So, okay, Card is a tool and a bigot. Let's all boycott the film.

Except as was recently pointed out to me on  Goodreads forum, Lionsgate, the company producing Ender's Game, has a history of positive policies towards their LGBTQA employees.They've issued a statement, unsurprisingly, in hopes of stopping the boycott before it starts. So paying to see Ender's Game means supporting a company that has publicly declared itself an ally of the LGBT community and apparently puts its money where its mouth is. So the decision is a bit more complicated.

I need to say one or two things about boycotts in general.

First of all, calling for a boycott of a product or service is not the same thing as calling for censorship. I have seen way too many people on the internet in the last few months conflating those two actions. No one who wants to boycott Ender's Game is also automatically saying Card should be silenced, his books should be burned, or anything else that would fall under the purview of censorship. Censorship is about restricting someone's freedom. A boycott is about using one's freedom to choose where one will spend money. In boycotting Ender's Game, people are saying, "Sure, Card, keep doing what you're doing, that's your right. It's also my right to ignore you and refuse to give you money."

Secondly, there's something to be said for participating in a large-scale boycott because it sends a message, even if it seems to be picking on just one person. I've heard before that there's no point in individuals boycotting items without it being part of a larger boycott, because only a large, organized boycott will make a splash. I, for one, boycott Walmart (for so many reasons I will not go into here; watch this movie if you're curious) despite the fact that my boycott is indefinite and doesn't have to do with a larger organized effort. I will continue to do so even though Walmart probably won't ever notice, because I could not live with myself if I shopped at a place with so many awful policies. There are other businesses and individuals I boycott, but I won't list them all here. The point is, I believe in boycotting, on a personal level and as part of a larger effort. And the larger efforts may actually bear fruit, which is why boycotting Ender's Game may be worth it despite Lionsgate's good policies.

Another thing to consider is the long view: if Ender's Game does well at the box office, Card's chances of scoring more movie deals go up. Do we really want to funnel millions of dollars into this man's pockets?

I am sad I'll miss out on what I'm told will be a really good sci fi movie. But to quote MLK, "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." I realize it's just a movie. Seems a little dramatic to quote King. It's just that I so rarely want to see movies that come out these days, and it's such a pleasure to do so. So it is a sacrifice. And a worthy one--I am committed to opposing forces that would deny rights and dignity to people anywhere. So no Ender's Game for me.

Were you planning on seeing Ender's Game? Have you changed your mind? Tell me your take on all of this.

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* It's important to note that Napoleon later escaped from Elba and went on to lead an army again. Need I explain the implication I'm making in reference to Card?

Adventure Stories & Orientalism

I'm so pleased that several people have commented on my post concerning dieselpunk and orientalism. I had already decided to write a follow-up post in order to delve more deeply into the question, as I really think it's worth discussing and it's something I mull over a lot. This is that post.

David Mark Brown commented on my original blog post about how he chose to flip character expectations around in order to challenge some of the problems of race relationships, etc., in his dieselpunk fiction. That shook me out of the assumption that the main characters of dieselpunk stories had to be westerners. I still have an issue with that, though, which is as a white westerner myself, I'm not sure how to believably write from the point of view of a nonwesterner or someone belonging to a nonwhite culture. I'm not ruling it out, just saying it would pose a considerable challenge to me. I've actually attempted to write from the pov of a black woman in the past (it was sci fi in a universe I built, so saying African American or Caribbean American doesn't fit). I never felt like I pulled it off, though.

A really big part of what troubles me is the issue of exoticism. Stephen A. Watkins commented on this blog post (which Tiyana Marie White wrote in response to my post), "I think there’s a difference between the aesthetic appreciation of something “exotic” meaning that it’s outside the norms of your experience and the type of problematic “exoticization” that results from fetishizing something that’s different for no reason than that it’s different." Exoticism/exoticization is huge for me. To be clear, the trouble I have is that I would like to write stories where the mc must go to some country foreign to them, to seek out some sort of treasure/have some sort of other adventure, much in the tradition of Indiana Jones. What I can't work out is how to impart all the thrills and fears of such a thing, without painting the culture as exotic and sinister. I'm not talking about describing the people in stereotypical terms (which isn't just offensive, it's also plain tiresome), so much as trying to achieve a tone of menace, etc., for the mcs, who are navigating a land that is foreign to them. Throw in some sort of cursed item(s) or whatever, and you have a recipe for your typical dark and threatening culture as seen in myriad books and films. The problem with that is that when you choose to represent a real Earth culture that way, you other them and contribute to a history of imperialism and oppression, something I don't want to do.

One option is to go ahead and represent some of the culture as sinister. For example, have some creepy big wig in the culture invite the characters to dinner, say, and then the characters proceed to navigate a house full of unnatural shadows and decorated with unsettling objects. The meal would be shocking to them as well due to whatever they're eating... if you've read my previous post, you might recognize this as a reference to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a movie that really beats you about the head with orientalist representations. As you may recall, part of the trouble with Temple is that it's not just portraying a culture in a very negative light, it's also doing so with blatant inaccuracies. Anyway, so let's say I want to have the creepy dinner chapter and I'm going to avoid the blatant inaccuracies. I'm still using items of the culture to create an aura of fear and danger. I could counterbalance that chapter with some sort of positive interaction in another chapter with much more approachable, appealing characters of the foreign culture. I don't mean yet another stereotype (lusty women who fall for the hero, mystical sages who provide guidance, etc.). No, I'm thinking more along the lines of the Colombian drug lord in Romancing the Stone (not a dieselpunk movie, but it operates on the same principal as interwar adventure stories with the mild mannered woman and rough and tumble male guide--think of The Mummy, same principle--who delve into a dangerous foreign land and encounter menacing characters, etc. in the pursuit of treasure). In Romancing the Stone, the audience is led to believe romance writer Joan Wilder and her adventuring guide, Jack I-forget-his-last-name are about to meet a stereotype of a Colombian thug: some backwards, unsophisticated guy who rides a mule. Turns out, the guy has modern ammenities, has read all of Joan's books, and the mule in question is a 4X4. Now, believe me, I'm not here to say that Romancing the Stone somehow avoided racist depictions because of this scene. Sadly, as much as I enjoy that movie, I think it's terribly problematic, too. But I digress. My point is that the scene challenges audience expectations. It does it, no doubt, in order to get laughs. Similar scenes abound in many films--and I think more often than not, they are there to get laughs. It's funny to set up expectations and then turn them on their heads.

My question is, do those sorts of scenes challenge expectations enough to be an antidote to the sinister scenes that paint a "foreign" culture as dark, dangerous, magical, etc.?

Anyway, to return to what Stephen Watkins wrote, I suppose another way to approach the issue of exoticism to interrogate whether those "sinister" representations fetishize the culture or simply represent it as unfamiliar to readers/viewers. When I wrote the as-yet-unpublished sequel to The River and the Roses I wanted to introduce Daniel Seong's family, and I wanted to do so intelligently. So I went on a Korean American chat board and asked a bunch of questions. The people on the board were super patient with me and helped to dispell some of the stereotypes I had knocking around in my head. They gave me insight into how to represent the family dynamics, the words people use, the way a dinner would play out, etc. It was all very cool and I learned a lot in the bargain. I'm reasonably sure I did a nice job of writing those scenes concerning Daniel's family. It's just a lot easier in the realistic setting of my modern day psychic mystery to not fall into the orientalist trap. In River, I can have Veronica come in as an outsider to a culture she's unfamiliar with, and have her be a bit uncomfortable and nervous about it, but still see it as a real, breathing, normal culture. Then again, she's not meant to be in a threatening situation. It's not an adventure story. Aside from her ability to commune with the dead (which really makes her more exotic than anyone else in the book), there's no magic, no cursed items, no spooky caves, no dungeon crawls, no evil villains (there are bad guys, but they are much more plebean). Is it possible to write adventure stories where there are all those things and not fall into the orientalist trap?

I suppose another option is to take the flipping-the-binary thing even further. Have a nonwhite and/or nonwestern hero who is dealing with a white, western villain. I mean, you do see that, of course. Nazis spring to mind. Is that the only way? Isn't avoiding casting nonwhite and/or nonwestern villains in a story just another form of discrimination?

Well, I've written myself into a corner. Help me out, folks. What's your take?

What is Dieselpunk?

After my recent blog post on Captain America: The First Avenger, I got a couple of questions about the terms "dieselpunk" and "decopunk." There's a pretty nice description of dieselpunk here, but I thought I'd talk a little about what it means to me.

I've come across a forum post where someone described dieselpunk as a scene rather than a genre, mainly, if I understand correctly, because of the dirth of actual dieselpunk fiction out there. I'll grant you that there aren't as many movies and TV shows with the elements that make up dieselpunk than there are capitalizing on the popularity of steampunk, but I think it's incorrect to say there aren't very many. In the last few months I've watched eight movies and two anime tv shows (notably Last Exile, which perhaps due to the fact that I watch it at 3am when I'm giving the baby his bottle and I have the sound turned almost all the way down, has come to a point where it is incomprehensible to me, unfortunately. I still really enjoy the soundtrack, though)--and of those eight movies, none were in the Indiana Jones series. There are also quite a few books that qualify, at least according to my definition.

So I should probably get to that.

To me, dieselpunk is fiction genre (or, more broadly, a scene) that draws on sci fi from the 1920s-1940s. Dieselpunk differs from steampunk in that its machines have internal combustion engines. You don't see airplanes in steampunk--at least, not unless they are some sort of steam-powered clockwork. You do see airplanes in dieselpunk--prominently so. But you also see other, weirder vehicles like the vanships in Last Exile. Also, very often you see robots. The idea with dieselpunk is that the tech is retro-futuristic (a combination that I find delightful). Lots of dials, knobs, gauges, levers, and grease, but I could see a story where these old-fashioned machines allow for (minor) space travel or teleportation--much like Telsa's inventions in The Prestige are steampunk yet futuristic.

The time period encompasses the decades of history I find most interesting to study--the 1920s, especially in the U.S. due to Prohibition, are fascinating because they represent the moment when westerners entered the modern age. Probably because of that, much of the pulp fiction of the time involved exploration of nonwestern parts of the world--the exotic, mysterious places most threatened by extinction in the modern age. More on that in a moment, as it raises a rather thorny problem.

The 1930s provides the concept of noir--film noir, detective stories, and the rise of fascism in several locations around the world.

And the 1940s gave us World War II--a terrible time, of course, but also a time people remember as a golden age of victory gardens, radio programs, and shared purpose. In our memories, everyone was in agreement in the 1940s--the Allies were working together to oppose the evils of the Axis Powers, who in turn were working together to destroy everything good in the world. Through a simple lens, World War II is the most ethically accessible war, because there are such clear bad guys, especially in Europe. (Please understand, I'm saying this as a writer, not as a historian. As a historian, this sort of thing does not fly.)

So dieselpunk has a rich playground to run around in. Add to that all of the bright optimism and faith in science that preceded the dropping of the atomic bombs and the discovery of the death camps. Think of the excitement of the World's Fairs. And to top it off, dieselpunk has its own artistic style: art deco. In fact, a subgenre of dieselpunk (itself a subgenre of steampunk, of course) is decopunk--basically everything dieselpunk is without such an interest in the machines.

But back to the exotic lands, for a moment, and the problem they pose.

I may eventually devote an entire post to this minefield, because it's a doozy, and it's one I'm particularly concerned with because I'm liable to get caught in the middle of it one of these days. Orientalism.

What, you ask, is orientalism, and what does it have to do with dieselpunk?

In a nutshell, orientalism is the representation of nonwestern cultures (most often Middle Eastern, but it's just as valid for various Asian areas as well as any other part of the world where people are predominantly brown, in my opinion) through the filter of western ideas, desires, opinions, prejudices, etc. It's a form of racism with a long history in fiction. Probably one of the best examples of a movie that is both dieselpunk and orientalist: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. One of the big problems with orientalism is that writers who fall prey to it often misrepresent cultures or conflate two or more cultures. In the case of Temple, for instance, the goddess Kali is depicted as evil and ruling the underworld, which is inaccurate. Much of the cuisine is probably closer to Chinese than Hindu, as well. The attitude in days gone by among writers and fans of orientalist fiction was to shrug and say something along the lines of, "It's all the same anyway." (In case that's your attitude, try turning it around and imagining what it would be like for a Hindu or Chinese film to depict your culture as the same or at least jumbled with some other culture--usually belonging to a historical enemy. Now imagine that happening over and over in every book and movie that depicts your culture for hundreds of years.) For more on Temple's issues specifically, go here.

Nowadays I see a deep uneasiness in movies like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow--they so desperately want to be able to depict grand adventures like those of Allan Quatermain (a character who was originally more steampunk than dieselpunk) but they don't want to come under fire for racism. It's a pickle. I love stories of treasure hunts, dungeon crawls, scary jungles and survival in ice storms. But how do you write about exotic lands without othering those people the main characters, who by nature of being dieselpunk characters will be westerners, will encounter there? How do you portray a culture respectfully while simultaneously making it mysterious, sinister, and, in many cases, somehow mystical? What's a white writer in love with the retro-futuristic fiction of the1920s-1940s to do?

The best I've come up with is to take the story off of planet Earth altogether, and set the dungeon crawls, barroom brawls, and mystical encounters on other planets entirely (Firefly, anyone?). And don't even think about basing the alien cultures on specific (stereotyped and misrepresented) Earth cultures. Lucas did that and it's painful to watch. Of course, the real problem with that solution is that you've pretty much left dieselpunk behind once you leave Earth or at least an Earth-like setting. Yes, it's sci fi, but it's limited sci fi. Dieselpunk is not atomicpunk, and I can't see diesel engines powering even the most fun retro-futuristic space ships farther than a trip to the moon, maybe.

What do you think about dieselpunk? Do you like stories set in the 1920s-1940s?
How would you handle the orientalism problem?

Pen Names: Good Idea or Bad?

I've been toying with the idea of creating different pen names for different genres of stories I write (or intend to write). It seems like it might function as a way to keep things organized. I'm the type of person who has folders and subfolders for organizing email or documents on my computer. And yet, in real life, I'm pretty messy. Go figure.

There are my Veronica books, and I'd probably include Broken Ones in the same genre. Modern day, involves ghosts. Those have been around for a year, with "Sophia Martin" as the author name.

As a writer, you wear many hats. :)

Then there's The City Darkens, my current WiP, which is a serialized novel and in the genre of decopunk, sci fi/fantasy. So... I could put my same name on it, or something like S. D. Martin, or M. R. Tinn (= Martin, get it?) or something else. The idea isn't to disguise who I am at all. I'll be posting all about the book here and putting it in the margin with the other books, etc.

And I've been thinking about writing some Georgian or Victorian romances, because there just aren't enough Jane Austen novels, you know? I love them. A lot of people love them. So why not attempt to approach the brilliance of Austen--ha! good luck, Sophia--or at least capture some of what makes those stories so wonderful? Anyway, it seems incongruous for Sophia Martin to write ghost stories, sci fi, and Georgian romances. So some other pen name for that.

The problem is, would using pen names destroy any value my platform on Twitter, Facebook, etc. provides to Sophia Martin? Ultimately, I'm not really convinced those do all that much for my book sales anyway, but what do you think about it? If I'm not going to hide that all the pen names are one person, does that make a difference? Do you think using pen names would be useful or frivolous?

I'm really curious. I hope you'll comment.

Writing again...

Well, it's been nearly a year! Finding out I was pregnant pretty much stopped my creative juices from flowing in the writing direction. I spent my time cooking and knitting, instead. But I am now finally starting to work on a story again. I'm happy about this, although I really didn't sweat the months on hiatus. I figure, as long as I'm not feeling stressed out because I'm blocked, I just have to go with my creative flow.

Of course, I've done some writing for the MA program I'm in online. It's for American History. That's been good, getting back into writing papers. There's something really satisfying about putting a paper together, like finishing a puzzle.

I have yet to actually start writing the story, although I think today may be the day for scene 1. We'll see; I'm not entirely sure the idea has matured enough. I've been using Pinterest to collect images for the idea I have. I discovered dieselpunk and decopunk recently and after watching Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film, Metropolis, I became inspired by the possibilities of a 1920s/scifi setting.

Actually, it all started when I was on Netflix in the middle of the night--I've discovered that the only way I can stay awake to feed the baby is to watch movies or tv shows--and I started watching Deep Space Nine from the beginning. And the first thing I realized, is that I am craving good sci fi. The second thing I realized is that I'm really intrigued by the space station as a setting. I can't say I was overly impressed with the writing of the shows--I can only hope they gain in depth as the series progresses--but the setting is really interesting. I like Quark's gambling hall, the promenade, the way that characters can come and go due to the daily docking and departure of ships.

One thing I haven't really hammered out yet, and I may need to give more thought before I jump into writing, is the tone I want for this story. I'd like to make it quirky, in the vein of dieselpunk stories such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and make it a fun adventure, but I also just got finished reading The Hunger Games Trilogy, and I was blown away by how brutal Suzanne Collins is with her characters. It really made me realize how NOT brutal I am with mine. So... something to ponder.

How about you, how do you treat your characters? Do you like to just have fun with them, but keep it light? Or do you put them through the ringer?