Why Do The Good People Always Die?

I've just been reading a Lady Mechanika story called La Dama de la Muerte, in which our heroine heads off for a holiday after a difficult time in which she has lost someone she loved.
She turns up, almost at random, at an inn in a small village near Mexico City, where she is welcomed, and invited to join the Day of the Dead celebrations. The family is kind; the little kid is cute - and then the bad guys arrive, and Lady Mechanika steps up to defend the village.
So far, so good.
While Lady Mechanika is following the trail of the bad guys back to their base, they double back, burn the village, and kill everyone in it.

In the film Logan, Logan and Professor X are on the run when they are taken in by a good, wholesome family. Some time is spent showing what nice people they are, with hopes and dreams for the future. Then the bad guys arrive and slaughter them all.

It happened in the film of the Punisher, too - wonderful, happy beach party with hero's extended family, and then everyone is slaughtered.

The message to take away from this is surely - if you are a good, nice person, with a loving family and a superhero turns up on your doorstep, DON'T LET THEM IN!

The message is also, of course, if you identify with the superhero, you can never have a normal family life, but must live burdened with guilt because you couldn't save that nice ordinary family that helped you when you needed it.

I get that the hero is supposed to be motivated by the deaths to go out and kill all the bad guys - but in the Lady Mechanika case, she was already motivated by the kindness of her hosts to defend them. Also, they took refuge in the church when she went off after the bad guys, and churches are usually built solidly enough that they can survive a siege of more than half an hour, even if the rest of the village burned. They shouldn't all have died.

I don't know if this is happening more in stories, or whether I'm just noticing it more - but I wish writers would stop doing it - or at least, let some good, ordinary people survive!

Inspiring Advice

I was reading Kate Elliot's blog I Make Up Worlds today, and came across some comforting advice to remember when I doubt whether anyone will want to read my stories. She has a very interesting blog generally, which is well worth reading. She said:

"You don't know how your creative work will be recieved. All you can do is offer up what is present in your imagination."

So all I can do is make the story as good as I can. After I've done the best I can with the story I have to tell, the only thing I can do is launch it on the world. If other people like it, that's brilliant, but the important thing is that I created something I'm happy with.

Formative Images of a "Writer"

Kameron Hurley has written an excellent article over at Fantasy Magazine, at http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-nonfiction/language-and-imaginative-resistance-in-epic-fantasy/.
She's talking mostly about women writers and epic fantasy, but she also talks about how people form images of "cheese" or "police officer" or "nurse" from their earliest exposures to those things, and thereafter, everything cheese-like has to be measured against that first experience of cheese to see if it fits.
So, her first experiences of writers were of white men, and this affected how she thought about writers for a long time.
Which got me thinking.
I never had the thought that I couldn't be a proper writer because I was female, because most of the writers I became aware of as a child were female. Enid Blyton was a massive influence - as a child, I desperately wanted to be George from the Famous Five, and go camping in the woods with my faithful dog. I didn't have a faithful dog until much later in life, but George's dog Timmy was the reason I always wanted one.
Later, I discovered historical fiction through the medium of Rosemary Sutcliff, and to a lesser extent through Henry Treece and Geoffrey Trease - so I was aware that men wrote books, but I wasn't excluded because women wrote books too. The other great favourites of my early teenage years were Mary Renault and Mary Stewart.
As a Star Trek fan, I was aware early on that DC Fontana's first name was Dorothy, and that she had written two of my favourite episodes, Friday's Child and Journey to Babel. So women could clearly write good science fiction. Among all the Asimov and Clarke and Zelazny and Silverberg, there was also Ursula Le Guin and Marion Zimmer Bradley and CJ Cherryh and Anne McCaffrey. And fantasy didn't just mean Tolkein and his many imitators, it meant Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain, too, and Gillian Bradshaw and Mary Gentle and Andre Norton.
Which makes it strange to me that a new generation of readers seem to be unaware of the women writers who have always been there in SF and fantasy, and who inspired me to write.

UFP Con 1986 Part 2

The business meeting over ran by an hour. Several important points were debated:-

1. Should business meetings be abolished? Vote almost unanimously no.

2. Should all fans get a chance to vote on changing or doing away with the business meeting system, rather than just the ones who were at any particular con?

This was debated long and hard and it was finally decided that it would not be fair to put the whole future of Cons in this country into the hands of people who, for whatever reason, had not or would not in the future, go to them.

3. The term 'Official', as disapproved of by Paramount. It was decided that they would be renamed 'British' with the running number.

All in all, a very good, reasonable discussion, with no back-biting, bickering or other nastiness.

Finally the bid for Necon 87, from New Enterprise. This happened to clash with Conspiracy 87, the World SF Con, in Brighton. It was decided to defer the bid in an attempt to change the date.

David waited patiently through all this for his talk, and the entire programme was put back an hour. He told the leprechuan joke that supposedly got him thrown out of Ireland. He also read 'The Shaggy Dog Story', which was deemed too funny for the Twilight Zone. The computer printout manuscript was later auctioned for £50.

As Pat used to adore Ed Straker, we went to see 'Invasion:UFO', which appeared to be cobbled together from at least three different episodes. We noticed how 'terribly, terribly polite' Moonbase was, and the prototypes of Concorde and the Shuttle.

We watched the Klingon Hunt from the balcony for a while, while I was ceasing to be an elf and turning into a Tudor lady for the masked ball. Pat and Claire ended up feeding a pair of cheeky pigeons ginger biscuits while they waited.

The masked ball was simply amazing in terms of variety and elaboration of costume. Pat and Claire refused to even wear masks. However, Batman and Robin were there, together with Dangermouse, the Pink Panther, all of Parsec in pig masks, Elizabeth I and Lady Blackadder (could this be one of the first gender-bending cosplays ever?)
, Roj Peyton and co. in Andromeda paper bag masks, Janis and Kim in rather nice black and silver creations - and David Gerrold who, when he wasn't chasing Shona, the ScotPress dog, on his hands and knees, was wandering around carrying a masked banana. The infamous room party, by the way, was to be held later that night in Diane Duane's room, until whenever. (David suggested July).

Monday: Breakfasted in the main hall. Overheard in conversation: "I haven't been to bed yet. There was this room party...."

Pat's never even seen Planet of the Apes, and I used to think that Galen was wonderful, so we spent an hour watching Urko and Burke trapped in a subway station. It puts a whole new light on the thing when you know Mark Lenard is the gorilla.

As I was now out of costume, Pat complained she kept losing me in the crowd. I suggested a flashing light might help. She is now measuring me up for a Tardis costume!

Speaking of which, at very short notice John Levene (Dr. Who's Sergeant Benton) agreed to talk for twenty minutes, having arrived at the hotel the previous day on business. He came over as a very pleasant chap, who had hugely enjoyed his time as an actor, and who took great delight in answering questions in a very roundabout, and interesting, way.

He was followed by the Writers Panel, comprised of David, Diane, David's editor (who had been selling copies of his new magazine 'The Brass Cannon Report' all weekend) and a British writer who works for the Civil Service whose name I didn't catch. (A letter to the fanzine later, from Diane Duane, said that it was Peter Morwood, who she later married, and who is Northern Irish) 'The Brass Cannon Report' is a little bit of everything from computers to space to translating German. It came out during the panel that the woman who had written an excellent piece on the 'Challenger' tragedy is actually dyslexic, and it took the computer over five hours to correct the spelling.

The closing ceremony went as usual, and David Gerrold was presented with a giant inflatable banana covered in autographs and messages ("Hey, this one says 'Yankee go home'!"). Roj Peyton auctioned off some special items that David had brought, the usual percentage going to charity, and the American guests now have a hazy idea of panto:-

Chris Chivers: "Where's Roj Peyton?"

"BEHIND YOU!"

Roj Peyton: "Oh, no he's not!"

"OH, YES HE IS!"

David Gerrold was asked if he would write a book on the English sense of humour, to which he replied: "How can you write about something you can't understand?"

And on that note, we reluctantly returned to the real world.

Looking back on this Con, I think it's the one I remember the most clearly, and one of the ones that I enjoyed the most. I was with friends, and knew quite a few familiar faces among the other Con goers, and I knew what to expect from the programme, so I could just relax and enjoy everything. Also, there was the writing tutorial, which helped my writing a lot. At the time, I was writing Star Trek fan fiction, most of which has mercifully disappeared into oblivion, though I was quite proud of one or two stories.

Ann Crispin and Yesterday's Son

I saw on tor.com today that Ann Crispin has died. She was only 63.

Ann Crispin wrote one of my favourite ever Star Trek novels - in fact, two that come as a pair - Yesterday's Son and Time For Yesterday. It starts with the premise that, while Spock was trapped in the past of the doomed planet Sarpedion, he got Zarabeth (the woman who saved him and Dr McCoy from certain death in a snowstorm) pregnant. At the beginning of the book, he discovers that he is a father, and insists on going back to Sarpedion's past to rescue the child. Kirk and McCoy, being who they are, insist on going with him - and they find Zar, who is a young man, not a child, and who causes Spock quite a bit of soul searching.
I loved Zar - I loved the way McCoy cut his hair into Spock's fringe style, and the way he stalked off and got himself a ham sandwich when he violently disagreed with Spock but didn't want to show it emotionally, and how he experimented with sliding doors, and looked with wonder on his first alien sky full of stars. I was there, in the story with them, and that is the sign of a very good storyteller as far as I'm concerned. It's all the more remarkable in that this was Ann Crispin's very first professional submission.

She was also, it is obvious from the comments over on tor.com, a very nice person, who will be greatly missed from the SF family.

Writing Magazine - "It must be magic"

The Writing Magazine does a regular column about writing different sorts of fiction, and this month the "Fiction Focus", by Margaret James, was on Fantasy writing.
Now, fantasy writing is something I think I know a bit about. I've been reading it since childhood, and trying to write it for about ten years. The article is a beginner's guide - but so disappointing, even when that is taken into account.

She starts off gradually, for those people who are not fantasy readers at all, with some examples of alternate history. Robert Harris's Fatherland is very well known, of course - but where's Harry Turtledove? He's written a lot more excellent alternative history than Robert Harris ever did.

Then Margaret James gets into the meat of the article. "There are at least three gradations of fantasy writing," she says, "from reality-based fiction, through to fiction which links our world to an alternative reality, to heroic fantasy set in an invented world in which not even the laws of classroom physics need apply."

For reality-based fiction, she mentions The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, which is based on a Russian fairy tale. All very fine - but where is Charles de Lint's Newford, for example?
She goes on to talk about time-slip fiction, with no examples of that sub-genre at all, so how about Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, a children's story set at a girls' boarding school? That story was so good it got onto Jackanory, the children's BBC series that read a book a week for many years. In fact, when I look at Goodreads, there is a list of 617 time travel stories, and just among the children's examples there is Moondial by Helen Cresswell, The Children of Green Knowe by LM Boston, and Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett, all of them made into TV serials. Or for adults, how about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, or Tim Powers' Anubis Gates?

"As for stories set in both our own world and in a fantasy world, linking the two, the Harry Potter and Twilight series are the obvious contenders here," Margaret James says. But surely Twilight should go into her first category of reality based fiction set in this world only? And what about Narnia and the most famous wardrobe in all fiction, or Alice in Wonderland? Or for adults, Neil Gaiman's London Below in Neverwhere, or Guy Gavriel Kay, or Barbara Hambly's Darwath series?

And for heroic fantasy, she chooses Lord of the Rings. She says herself it's the "obvious role model" - but heroic fantasy has come on a long way since all those sub-Tolkien quests with Halflings, elves and dwarfs, and if a writer wants to start writing heroic fantasy now, they'd be better advised to read some of the more recent work. What about Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, or even Robert Jordan's immensely long Wheel of Time series, or Raymond E Feist, or Tad Williams, or Robin Hobb, or George RR Martin...?

Some of the advice she gives is good, however - but it doesn't just apply to fantasy. The reader has to be able to identify with the characters, even if they're in love with a sparkly vampire or three feet tall with hairy feet. "[We need] to believe we're reading about beings which share our human traits, both the good and the bad, and with whom we can empathise," she says, and later, "We need these stories because they explain us to ourselves."

If someone who has never written fantasy, but would rather like to try, takes this article as their guide, I'm not at all sure that what they produce would be publishable.

Read More - Read Better

I was looking at onlinebookclub forum the other day, which is quite a good book discussion site, and someone was asking for advice. Aspiring writers are often told to "read more", and this particular aspiring writer wanted to know what sort of books they should read to be a better writer.
I gave some advice that had been useful to me, and I thought I'd like to expand on it here.
The first thing to do is to choose a book that you have already read, but which you didn't think was all that good. (Don't try to do this with a book you really, really like - you'll never be able to read it in the same way again!). It doesn't matter what the book is about, or who it's by - just choose a book that you finished, and then thought; "Well, that was average."
The next thing to do is to start re-reading it, and this time pick it apart. Did this particular scene confuse you? Why? How could it have been written better? What would you have included or left out to improve it?
And what about that character - the one who suddenly does something that makes no sense. Why did they do that? How would you have written it to keep the character consistent?
Or that description? Did you feel you were really there, in that place? If not, how could it have been re-written to improve it?

A good example of this for me (though this is a book I love, rather than one that I consider to be merely average!) came when I re-read Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff as an adult.
When I was in my first year at grammar school (so eleven or twelve years old), we studied Warrior Scarlet in English lessons. In those days, there was no national curriculum, so teachers were more free to choose books to read as a class than they are now. That year, we read Little Grey Men, by BB, Edward Lear's poetry - especially The Dong with the Luminous Nose and The Jumblies, and Warrior Scarlet. Nobody thought about the fact that an all girls' school was studying texts which hardly included any female characters (there are female characters in Warrior Scarlet, and one girl has an important sub-plot, but in the other texts we studied that year, female characters were invisible) - but it was the 1970s and things were different then.
Warrior Scarlet is about a Bronze Age boy becoming an adult of his tribe - and for the boys of the tribe, this means hunting and killing a wolf. Failure to do this means that the boy cannot be accepted as an adult of the tribe, and becomes part of the "servant class" of the Small Dark People who live on the fringes of the tribe. And they only get one try at it.
So an important scene in the book is the wolf hunt.
I remembered this scene in great detail from my first reading of the book - I was there, in my imagination, creeping through the undergrowth with my bronze tipped spear, examining wolf footprints and looking for wolf hairs caught on bushes. It was all very vivid.
When I came to the scene as an adult, none of that was there! It had all come from my own imagination, with only a few sparse descriptions from the text itself. There's the mark of a master storyteller - telling just enough for the reader's imagination to take flight and fill in the gaps for themselves!