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News or Comments? vera.nazarian@sff.net
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10-26-01
NEWSFLASH!
Welcome back to Deb Osorio, one of the NAW members who's been on a long hiatus! :-) Good to see you journalling again, Debbie!
A new personality has emerged in our favorite multiple personality writer who lives at farrellworlds.com, and this personality called SLF has signed a neat fat fantasy book deal with DAW. One thing jumped out at me, when SLF said:
"So while I will protest that my book needs the length, I do also wonder why that is. After all, science fiction isn't significantly different than fantasy in the sense that the worldbuilding needs to be done and explained (in context) to the reader. You have strange creatures and societies (often) in fantasy, but you also have the same task in science fiction. Worldbuilding is at the core of both forms. Yet science fiction novels tend to be somewhat shorter than doorstopper fantasies, with a few notable exceptions such as DUNE."
"Why that is, I'm not certain..."
Which got me thinking, why indeed. Why does fantasy of a certain type tend to get so long, while most SF is so slim? Is it that whole emotions versus ideas thing? Because I would say that worldbuilding occurs in both of these on an equal level.
And suddenly I think I know why.
It's the way these two speculative forms tend to handle time and history.
Fantasy tends to dwell on history and chrolonology and draws out generational events in greater detail, often linear, building up on this layering of events, while science fiction tends to go all haywire with time, and tends to just take liberal jumps forward (or backward if needed), skipping around. Because SF is supposed to be such a temporal "pro" in the scientific sense, it handles short-term events disdainfully by glossing over them, and goes for the long term millennia stuff, light years and galaxies life span, and Big Bang and all that. Most (but not all, of course) fantasy does not have that kind of irreverant time scope, and in general, even fantasies that do tend to deploy time distortion and play around with it (kinda like my own fantasy novel DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE), seem to stick to a humanity's lifespan of events -- several thousand years or so. Usually Dark Lords are born and vanquished by the time a millennium or two rolls around. It is still an awfully long period of time, but nowhere near science fiction's cosmic timescapes. Or, at least it seems that way.
And because fantasy gets into a more detailed short-term temporal approach spelling out everything as it goes -- a human lifespan approach (and when it runs out of one lifespan, it gets another human hero to follow in the first hero's footsteps) -- it seems to dwell on shorter more manageable time gaps, and at the same time as it is easier to fathom, this takes up more space to describe closely -- hence the FAT books. Science fiction on the other hand goes boldy over millennia in the spans of paragraphs or a couple of pages or chapters, because the POV and other characters can be so much more alien as to conquer time completely. Even with seemingly immortal fantasy characters such as Merlin, we only see a human cross-section of a lifespan. We don't see Merlin outlast a sun's evolution from orange to a red dwarf, know what I mean? :-)
So that's my guess as to why fantasies are fat and why SF volumes are skinny. And DUNE has always kinda suggested a big historical fantasy really, in the way it reads, to me.
In other news, I have just started a new Yahoo!Groups mailing list dedicated to Publicity And Self-Promotion For Writers. Please join!
Finally, I would like to thank Holly Lisle whose wonderful Forward Motion article Finding Silence really brought me out of a major funk. And thanks to NAWer Mike Jasper for leading me there in a roundabout way, in his yesterday's post!
10-18-01
NEWSFLASH!
I have been extremely busy cranking out novel galleys/ARCs (Advanced Review Copies) for different reviewers.
Let me give you a piece of valuable advice -- if you are trying to print double-sided on a regular laser printer that is not really designed to print that way, you are in for a lot of pain and suffering. Trust me. :-) And yet, if you really have to do it, there are things you can do to make it a little easier.
1) Do not panic! Buy the highest quality laser paper, at least 20 pound or more, so that the paper will not tend to warp as much.
2) Do not panic! The fact that the paper will warp anyway is a given. So you do the first side run and then put the printout under heavy books for about 48 hours to straighten and flatten the paper before you attempt to put it through the second time.
3) Do not panic! Depending on your printer's sheet capacity tray, you may have to hand feed it, or stack it very carefully. Experiment, and yet be ready for many paper jams and wasted paper and having to buy more toner cartridges. Oh, and when it all falls apart at some point (it will), you will go to Kinko's and will be prepared to prove that this is your own copyrighted material that you need to have printed.
4) Do not panic! Find out exactly how and where and to whose attention to send the review copies. Ask people who have done this before you waste time, materials, and money.
5) And finally and most importantly, do not panic.
*grin*
In other news -- best of luck (and a huge dollop of envy) to Lisa and to Erin who are having the intense time of their life at the Viable Paradise workshop right now!
And once again, more new good NAWticisms -- this place has been ripe with them lately...
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NEWSFLASH!
Ok, as you can see, I am gonna leave the cover flat up for a while... *grin* Gee, you wonder why? ;-)
For some more good news, got my MZB Fall Royalties last night, a check for $229.93 -- not a huge check, but just about enough to pay my SFF Net yearly renewal. *grin*
Also got a skinny slip of a form rejection from Fantastic for my story that so obviously "killed" Aboriginal magazine. Must send it somewhere else. Hmm....
Have been updating my Official Website, check it out, folks. :-)
In the NAW -- it's interesting how everyone handles things, does something a little unique, a little different to cope with the Post-9-11 time. Zette reminds us about the plight of the "other children." Linda buys hopeless stock because she knows it is one way to show faith. Erin is fired up with activism in the name of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afganistan. Neile needs to watch the hazy beauty of October leaves and softly sleep.
There is no right or wrong answer.
As for me, I resolve to work as hard as I can doing what I must do in my day-to-day life.
Once again, check out the latest NAWticisms...
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since 11-6-99
