SF Stories need editing too

When I was a younger and less experienced writer I used to worry that my stories didn't have the tortuous complexity of some of the books that were being published.  They had weird beginnings that seemed to have no connection to the story.  So why were those, often pretentious-sounding, beginnings, there?

Twenty years on I'm more critical of these books. In the intervening time I've learned to write commercial genre fiction. I've learned how to hook readers in, to shape stories, create narrative drive and cliffhangers.  Now if I see rambling beginnings in published novels I don't worry about what they mean, I wonder why the editor didn't tell the writer to cut it out. 

I recently read a fabulous book with multi-viewpoints, great pace, and a terrific twist ending, but if I hadn't persevered beyond the first pretentious two pages I would never have discovered that tale.  The start of the book was a philosophical ramble about stories being circles, and speculating on where the  tale began.   The story started about three pages further in, and all that preamble should have been cut.

I've often had the suspicion that established SF authors get away with far more sloppy writing than authors in other genres would.  Part of this is because of the 'speculative' part of the genre title.  We're speculating on new worlds, new futures, new peoples.

Those worlds, people, and events might well be weird, but the way we write about them shouldn't be,  one of my twenty year old how to write SF books makes the point that, the wierder the world, the more  straightforward the writing needs to be.  If your reader is pitched into the middle of a frightening or confusing world it's our job as writers to provide them with the map that allows them to navigate through it.

In the book I recently read I wonder why the editor didn't tell the writer to cut that beginning. It provided a barrier between me and the story.  I was willing to read past it to the treasure beyond, but how many people wouldn't put in that work?  

We're always claiming that SF is the forgotten genre, that not enough people read it.  So let's make it easy for them.  Let's kill the pretentious writing and make the reading easy,

Bring back the sensawunda

I've made the mistake of reading a lot of reviews of SF books and stories recently.  I innocently thought I'd read them to get me back up to speed in the genre, not having followed it for several years.  I needed to do my market research and see what was selling, and what books people were talking about.  I read some of the awards-nominated stuff, and found a couple of authors and issues I could identify with.

Then I turned to reviews.  Bad mistake.  I found so little positivity there.  Comments on books seemed to be thinly-veiled rants complaining that the book's author hadn't taken the same political stance as the critic.  Books were getting slammed from a personal political viewpoint, sometimes without any discussion of the merits of the book itself.  That's not a review, it's a diatribe.

All of which has left me with a nasty taste in the mouth,  I'm still naive enough to think that 'speculative fiction' is the place where writers can, well, speculate about the future.  The places where we can dream, and present cultures that have moved on from our current unsatisfactory ones.  But I didn't see any acknowledgement of the sensawunda in any of these reviews.  Maybe reviewers are just too cool these days to admit that they love something.

This lack of emotional engagement with the text drives me mad,   I've always needed to fall I love with the books I'm writing.  They embody themes and people I care about.  I'm not an impartial observer of my own stories.  I'm their cheerleader, the person who knows my characters will win through in the end.  And I'm crazy enough to be optimistic about the future.

For me, sensawunda contains the dazzling possibility that women might some day be equally treated in society, that their talents night be properly valued.  Yes, it's good that more women are being published in SF, and that some of them are gaining awards, but we still have a long way to go.  For me to regain that sensawunda I want to see women scientists unlocking the secrets of the universe.  And I want to see women working through the social and cultural implications of radical new technologies too.  And sometimes deciding that the social cost of adoption of these technologies is too high, and abandoning the research.  

Societies where women are independent, make free choices about their lives and careers, are not prevented from reaching the tops of their chosen careers, are respected there and listened to.  And where greed isn't the primary driver of technological change. 

Now those kind of stories might well bring back my sensawunda.

Women of quiet power

I've been thinking some more about the Women in Science Fiction  panel I attended in London last week.  

The overall feeling of the panel was that women were getting a rough deal in the SF genre.  They felt that the problems for women writers in SF were systemic.  Women were not getting published enough, they were not being reviewed enough, there were not enough women reviewers. The VIDA count and the Strange Horizons survey were quoted to back this up. One panelist felt that nothing had changed in five years.

But hang on there a moment.  I left the genre a decade ago because these issues weren't even being aired properly.  I cancelled my subscriptions to SF organisations because they appeared to have no women in them, and certainly didn't feature any women writers.  The world I was seeing then didn't include me as a participant.  But I can't say the same today.

The biggest thing that has changed is that people are aware of the gender imbalance.  Things are not the same. Two of the five nominees for the Hugo Best Novel this year are women writers, and women are shortlisted in nearly every other category of the award.  

A bigger concern to me is not the blanket issue of representation, but what women writers are being recognized for.  I don't want to read books about female assassins.  I also have a dislike of  kick-ass mercenaries.  Neither of these stereotypes bears any relation to the life i live.  I'm undomesticated and fiercely independent too, so I don't want to read stories where women are trapped in families either.

So what do I want to see?  First, as an introvert, I'd love to see more strong introvert characters, women of quiet power.  Introverts are the inventors, the people who stick at challenging tasks the longest.  I want to see stories where these people are forced to stand up for their beliefs and values against extrovert kick-ass types.  Stories where the answer isn't to raze the whole planet to the ground with the biggest superweapon we can build.  Stories where we talk to aliens and negotiate tricky diplomatic solutions instead of opening fire on them,

I want to see quiet heroines saving the galaxy.  Not cowed, owned women, but tough, independent characters who stick to the findings of their research and warn people of the truth about corrupted organisations and governments.  Women who are tough enough to withstand threats of blackmail and violence to uphold the truth,

Quiet power and courage, that's the sort of SF I'd like to see.  Save the planet, save the universe - without annihilating a huge swathe of something or someone else.

The invisible woman

Yesterday I went to the Women In Science Fiction panel organised by Jo Fletcher Books and Blackwell's in London.  The panel was  chaired by Edward James of the Science Fiction Foundation.  The panelists were Karen Lord, Stephanie Salter, Naomi Foyle, Janet Edwards, and Jaine Fenn.  

What emerged from the discussion was a systemic failure to recognise the talents of women writing science fiction.  Publishers aren't publishing enough women's SF books, booksellers aren't stocking enough of them, and even when women do get published, reviewers aren't reviewing their books as often.

The panelists wanted recognition for their work, not for being female. I can see the merits of this approach, but I suspect that this desire to blend in is one of the very things that makes women SF writers invisible. 

My recent experience with SF short stories has shown me that magazines aren't interested in stories about the fallout from rape.  One of mine was submitted for a women's SF special issue, and still got no interest.  I think it's a mistake for us to want to blend into the background, to say that our gender makes no difference to what we write and how we write it. Because to me it damned well does.

In my opinion we need more feminist, campaigning, SF.  I don't want my fiction to be interchangeable with a man's, I want it to be something that reflects a woman's world view and experience.  And sadly, even though the major awards have nominated women's books this year, those books are not about women's experience - at lease, as I know it,

Books that show women having sex with anyone they choose without any commitment don't accord with my experience of being a woman.   Women are writing books about things I don't care about, ladette behaviour and copious killing being two of them.  I cannot identify with sex-crazed mercenary women who kill casually. They violate all my core values.

So if we're wondering why women in SF aren't getting the recognition they deserve we might think about standing out more, not blending into the background.  Write about rape, about the  consequences of being saddled with an unwanted child, about prejudice and discrimination.  And put covers on those books that attract women. No pink please, but the faces of the female protagonists, in a world of colour instead of the black space default setting.

Women SF writers need to brand themselves as different, to stand out.  When we stop apologising for being women writing in a men's genre and claim that genre as our own then we might get noticed.

An independent truth

Reading Arcfinity's blog discussion with the six authors who have been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award, I came across Chris Priest's comment that "writers need to develop and keep an independent mind."  For me, the issue is more a case of revealing my independent truth.   I'm not a fan of grimdark, and I've steadfastly refused to  delve into all those books touted as the must-read piece of darkness.  

Some SF writers have a love affair with their shiny new tech.  It never breaks down, and they don't worry about its effects on the world it's unleashed on.  But my independent mind asks questions like "Why are we doing this?" and "What are the side-effects of this process?"  And often I read another's invented world and ask why nobody is doing anything about its harsh injustices. 

Humans have independent minds, and you'll never find a bunch of us all seeing the world the same way.  Dissention will always be with us.  People will always hold a broad spectrum of beliefs and values.  And yet in too many SF stories I see no evidence of these independent minds.

Currently, women protagonists seem to have morphed from feminist military SF to  kick-ass (a phrase I hate) bounty hunters.  My independent mind has no connection to these so-called women. They look like a recycling of the ladette, with the addition of her willingness to have unlimited sex with as many people as she can find.  Ho hum.

Which leaves me feeling disconnected from SF yet again.  I had hopes that the equal representation in the genre issue might translate into seeing books that show women in a broad range of occupations and  situations.  Maybe they'd put down the blaster and find the antidote to the plague that's decimating the planet instead.  Perhaps they'd use their calm demeanour to negotiate with a warlike alien species bent on taking over their planet and save their world and their people.

I've bought and read a couple of this year's awards books, but I haven't enjoyed either of them.  Getting to the end became a matter of willpower.  I looked on reading them as academic research.  I  had to resort to that because I had no connection with the protagonists.  I didn't fall in love with the stories' ideas either.  

Somebody might argue that there's no room for independent minds in the middle of a thousand years' war, but I'd argue that the agronomist tending the fields growing food, the doctor working away to provide a treatment for the diseases of the battlefield, are vital to their species' survival.  It's time we heard it for the quiet power and independent minds of these people working out of the spotlight.  These are the stabilisers of their worlds.

I want to see the genre show the independent thinking that marks out the human mind.  How about stories arising from conflict over a society-shattering new technology?  And what about really challenging attitudes to sexuality.  How about freedom from sex?  What would a world ruled by a woman with no sexual interest in anyone be like? Less open to corruption?  SF is supposed to be the genre that questions and challenges the status quo.  Let's reclaim that function.