NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin,
Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
What brand is Stupefying
Stories? Why have I come repeatedly to Stupefying Stories? Why do I write for Stupefying Stories?
Why do I read (some REALLY AWFUL!) slush for Stupefying Stories?
A teensy bit of
background.
I met Bruce Bethke,
who is the owner, operator, and inventor of the website, some three decades ago
because he’d run an ad looking for members to join a writing group that, at the
time, was made up of himself, Phillip C. Jennings, and Gerri Balter. I joined
and learned a lot; but ultimately I got married and focused, with my bride on building a relationship and a family. My writing fell to the wayside. Several years later, I saw Bruce
in 2005 at the Minnesota Science Fiction Convention (MiniCon 40, I think; Terry
Pratchett was the GOH (AMAZING speaker!), and Bruce and I reconnected. He was parenting a
blog called The Ranting Room and I started following it and eventually writing
for it. We corresponded more and rekindled the friendship we’d started in the
80’s; both of us had changed and in the early 2010’s our lives intersected in
moments of terror…first Bruce’s wife, and around a year later, my wife received breast
cancer diagnoses. Since then, I’ve been involved with Stupefying Stories pretty
much since its inception in 2012. I still write for it occasionally, I’ve
proofed some of the issues of the magazine, and was in the first one and then “collected”
in FIVE STARS (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938834356/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i9)
I continue to work with Bruce’s publishing company, RAMPANT LOON PRESS (https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Store-Rampant-Loon-Press/s?i=digital-text&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cp_30%3ARampant+Loon+Press&qid=1592661624&ref=sr_pg_2)
in the hope that they will publish my Young Adult SF series beginning with HEIRS
OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES: Emerald of Earth…
At any rate, in an
email, Bruce let me know he’d posted this: http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2020/06/status-update-19-june-2020.html
It’s a loaded
essay and guaranteed to draw ire and fire from people who don’t believe he’s
correct enough, (though not in the way a LONG DISTANT PAST co-writer Bruce shared
a project with ended up doing and sometimes still does). I’d have other comments on his essay,
too, but my hide is far too thin to weather such I-n-F…
I wanted to touch
on this: “…sharply defining the Stupefying Stories brand, making it clear what
we hope to deliver to readers and what exactly our vision of science fiction
is. I’ve always been too much of a literary omnivore to do that, but it’s
finally time I did.”
I responded to him
privately first, and I’m posting this now as an adaptation of my email:
While the stories in
Stupefying Stories may deal with serious subjects and dark lives and even have
grim endings (the story I know best leaps to mind: “Teaching Women To Fly” (If
you’re interested, you can find it in FIVE STARS), and those who critiqued it
consistently expected everything to come out “sweet” in the end. I didn't want
it to come out sweet because LIFE ain’t sweet. Reflecting though, I realized
that while it didn't come out all roses for Celia, her son would be integrated
into a subjugated culture of indigenous people and that same culture got a bit
of revenge by feeding off the hopes of the “superior” culture...hmmm...) -- it has NEVER taken itself too seriously.
Stupefying Stories and Bruce himself use humor to touch on difficult subjects. HEADCRASH is
actually pretty dark. So is his novelization of the movie script of WILD, WILD WEST. I mentioned long ago that the novelization was funnier than the movie, but the theme of the movie (and the
original) seemed to be looking at the impact of merging of the life of the old
(Civil War) by the new (wildly...um...speculative technology. It was
startling for me to realize then that the devices I use in my everyday life
might be – nah, WOULD HAVE BEEN considered impossibly speculative (read
WITCHCRAFT) in 1920).
In WILD, WILD WEST, the consequences inherent in that merger of stolid, dark past and wild, wild future should have precipitated clear conflict in the movie. But, because it was the result of a six writers independently creating (adding up the Story by/Screenplay by people who are all listed separately) mongrel of a script, it ended up not saying ANYTHING. I seem to recall Bruce saying he wrote the novel based on one of the original scripts…(but I’m retired now, so I’m not sure that’s true…)
In WILD, WILD WEST, the consequences inherent in that merger of stolid, dark past and wild, wild future should have precipitated clear conflict in the movie. But, because it was the result of a six writers independently creating (adding up the Story by/Screenplay by people who are all listed separately) mongrel of a script, it ended up not saying ANYTHING. I seem to recall Bruce saying he wrote the novel based on one of the original scripts…(but I’m retired now, so I’m not sure that’s true…)
The Stupefying
Stories brand has appeared to me to intentionally look at serious
solutions to serious problems – without taking itself too seriously.
While that is EXTREMELY
too subtle for many, I think the people who read Stupefying Stories both as
short story collections, in novel form, and on the webpage are looking for that
kind of mental issue breaker.
The problem thus
far, has been a perceived inconsistency of publication (of course the average consumer and writer is completely uninterested in the people behind the product. For them, life is “gimme,
gimme, gimme, NOW!” When instant gratification of every whim isn’t granted, they
CAN get all huffy and obnoxious and stomp off to find something “better”...which
they won't...because most of what I see in the SF/F takes itself far too seriously.)
Just one example
is SFWA. While the paucity of POC has existed oh, since Hugo Gernsback and
Isaac Asimov and all the rest, the hue and cry to bring in writers of color has
only reached a feverish pitch in the past two years. Prior to that, WOMEN had
only barely been accepted into the hallowed halls of science fiction (they made
better inroads in fantasy, but still…). Now that being friends and publishers of
POC/GLBTQ/GQ is popular and our culture is attempting to make it NOT a crime to be
associated with “them” by offering sweeping protection so everyone feels safe talking (some sincerely, some not-sincerely)...
The abrupt shift honestly,
makes me feel ill. (Before you judge me, go to my FaceBook page and skim
through my Friends…then pack your PNOC pre-judgement back up again). Don’t get
me wrong, there were pioneer publishers and editors who, rather than jumping on
the current band-surfboard, were trying to swim against the riptide of racist
policy, and they cut the current for the rest who are now swimming in their
wake. But the surfboard is crowded now with less-than-earnest-trend-followers. My biggest fear is that it will be a "thing" and once it's not trendy anymore, US and state congressfolk, various Departments, and society as a whole will ignore making real change -- the way they ignored the Emancipation Proclamation 157 years ago, the Civil Rights Act 56 years ago, and why nothing changed in Minneapolis, where I live, 53 years ago, and oddly enough, five years ago ago (
Stupefying Stories
has always been about making readers think – not with easy, obvious, symbolism,
but really THINK about what a story means…and all the while, Stupefying Stories
has never ONCE taken itself too seriously.
Try it out, sit back and mull, and I think you’ll see what I do.
Try it out, sit back and mull, and I think you’ll see what I do.
Resource: http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/
2 comments:
What I fear will happen is what's happened before: literary tokenism. Some "identitarian" category of author will suddenly become very hot, and all the agents, editors, and publishers in the business will rush to sign such authors in order to signal how virtuous, hip, trendy, and tuned-in to the times they are. The problem is that there are never enough REALLY GOOD authors in any given identitarian category at any given time, so along with the truly good and undeservedly overlooked authors, a whole lot of marginal to downright bad authors will be signed simply because they have the right "look" to be this year's model.
What happens next is that the publishers aggressively promote their authors as being "the next [famous identitarian writer]" and the market quickly becomes saturated with identity books, most of which, to be frank, are not very good. So with astonishing rapidity, readers (who are, after all, the reason why the whole writing and publishing industry exists) quickly come to consider reading books by authors with the specified identity to be an experience comparable to being force-fed lima beans.
So picking books or stories to publish based primarily on the author's identitarian qualities, and not on the quality of the actual work itself, always backfires. It may create a short-lived buzz and move a lot of copies of a few titles in the short term, but in the long run, instead of expanding overall readership by creating an entirely new market for books by authors of the specified identity, all it does is establish in the customers' minds that books by authors of said identity generally aren't very good, and are best avoided.
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