Sak

SF Hypocrite

01.11.10 20:37
Section: Sak
Filed Under: Copyright - Sak, Observations, Rants

I am a hypocrite.

Yep, it’s true. I had to get it out, and admit it to the world. It’s a starting point, something to consider and work with, so that in the future perhaps I’ll be less a hypocrite about certain things. Today, my hypocrisy revolves around the Science Fiction genre. That’s not to say that I’m not a hypocrite about other things, just that the focus of this little babble is the topic of Science Fiction works.

I didn’t realize I was a hypocrite right away. That’s not how it works. You sit down and say and do things that are hypocritical for a little while, and either you become aware of it and admit you’re an ass, or you don’t and you go on being an hypocrite. Which is why I believe there may actually be hope for me. In my SF hypocrisy, I found myself sitting the other evening and sharing with a couple friends my displeasure with yet another work in the SF genre that I’d recently picked up to read. I mean, it was claimed to be a life changing read, so I absolutely had to get into it. Right?

Of course, one person’s idea of life changing is completely different than another. I wrongfully assumed that my life would be significantly altered by turning the pages of this magnificent tome; that I’d see the world in a whole new way, becoming less afraid and unsure, a new enlightenment drifting up from the pages into my being, merging with me and transforming me into a source of light. Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme, but my thoughts of life changing works turned to authors like, Steinbeck, Hesse, Orwell, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Even beyond assuming it would fall in among the literary greats, I was willing to accept it as a wonderful romp through ideas and thoughts, the likes of which I’ve enjoyed in the works of P.K. Dick, Neal Stephenson, Tolkien, or Lem.

Instead, in the first chapter, I read through a bar scene where reincarnated souls deal with the frustration over their lost lives with sword fights because it’s easy enough to simply have a backup of oneself in-case you die, and an orgy and sex with a four-armed woman (who quickly changes into a two armed woman for the deed just because she can).

Okay, I get it. A mysterious protagonist who has appeared in a violent universe without any memory of his past life, and the importance of having those memories available again. Action and sex to get the blood pumping and interested in the story. Sets a pace. I mean, I got a chubby from the sex scene, so why wouldn’t I be interested in reading more, right? There are arguable life changing elements in there too. The protagonist neglecting to backup himself and engaging in sword fights touches on the delicate mortality of man. Walking from a deadly situation in a pub into an orgy and sex with a seductively bizarre woman offers some insight into the notion of opening oneself up intimately at random so as to experience the beauty of life and love as it is available. After all, tomorrow may involve an unfortunate encounter with a truck. Carpe Diem!

That’s pretty cool. Yet I got all uppity about it and threw the book down, all pissed off that someone who was sitting down to write a story didn’t take the time to work out those thoughts and ideas into something different, something more meaningful and symbolic that would get me thinking deeply about the precarious nature of existence. Instead I get sword fights and random sex. Not necessarily bad things, but maybe a little lazy?

Then a few other things hit me as I subjected my roommate with my complaints as he melted, droopy eyed, into the couch. What an ass I am to assume that just because there are a few somewhat overdone tropes or cliches at the onset of a novel, that there won’t be more to offer in its later pages. It’s confusing, from the perspective of an aspiring writer, to see them used by a published author when those types of things are cautioned against vehemently; offered up repeatedly by such successful authors as what not to do. I suppose I’m at fault for letting my own creative aspirations get in the way of simply enjoying the works of another for what they are, and leaving it at that. Particularly since, after stomping away from one such experience, I go and turn on Star Trek, or some other Science Fiction television series, and while away an hour immersed in even worse.

My fault lies in some assumption that writing, and the novel, is the purest form; the ideal model from which all other crap is based. I forget that it’s a medium that’s been around a lot longer than the more recent forms of entertainment, and that it suffers from as great a signal to noise problem, perhaps even worse, than other mediums. I see something mentioned as life changing, and I forget that there have been times that I’ve become overly excited about some new work of creativity that I’ve come across, and run around claiming it’s the greatest experience ever, when it was to me at that moment, but not necessarily for everyone throughout all time.

I confess that, as an aspiring writer, there is still a great deal to be learned from these other works. They are produced by professional writers, who are well acquainted with the methods of story telling. Even though I recently complained about a possible grammatical issue with Matter, I was still able to recognize what was going on there. Banks did a fantastic job of developing the setting, describing ancient worlds constructed by some lost alien civilization, even if he padded it with what I believed to be senselessly weird aliens. He has a solid plot about a young prince caught witnessing the murder of his father, and a conspiracy by his father’s oldest adviser to take over the kingdom. I mean, not that that’s never been done before, but perhaps it would have been in my best interest to get past that, simply experience a story and move on. I suppose I could claim that I don’t read as fast as those who rise to the challenge of 365 books in one year, and so wasting time on a novel I’m not interested in is not in my best interest. But then my hypocrisy knows no bounds, since I’ll sit through thirteen hours of a cancelled television show about a guy who’s become un-stuck in time.

So here’s an honest apology out to Ian M. Banks, and Charles Stross, for my being an overly critical bastard, and a hypocrite. Come to think of it, perhaps these books really were life changing for me after all?