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May. 3rd, 2010
The Bearable Lightness of James Rollins
May. 3rd, 2010 10:57 amSo...I'm circling around Chapter Five, but thought I would take a moment to talk about some of the reading I did over last week. Because of the Sunburst Awards madness, I generally haven't been keeping a master list this year, which means I think I may have been going through stuff even faster than usually, since I don't have a talley-o'-shame to remind me how precipitate I've been being.
Most recently, I blew through four James Rollins books in about as many days. No, I didn't have to pay for them, thankfully; I scooped them up from the condo "library" downstairs, where somebody equally shame-faced had recycled them. For those who don't know his work, Rollins specializes in rollicking adventure built around huge research/expositional chunks. What he seems to like to do is stumble across something neat-o, then build it into a far-reaching pseudo-scientific conspiracy, often with archaeological trappings. Those of you who like this sort of thing may find this the sort of thing you like, while those of you who look for realism and believable characterization? Not so much.
Rollins' books go down easy, and exit the consciousness pretty much the same way. In many cases, I can later recall big chunks of detail, but not much about the actual plot. Like Amazonia, for example, in which one guy had a jaguar for a pet, and there was an evil French mercenary with a sexy Yamomamo girlfriend who made shrunken heads out of people while they were still alive! Whereas the plot was about...a tree? That gave you cancer? But could also heal you, because at one point two people had sex in it while hiding from amphibious piranha, and it cured the chick's infertility?
...yeah, pretty sure. Anyhow, it was a fast read.
A lot of his books involve a top secret super-science anti-terrorism think-tank called Sigma Force, run by a dude named Painter, whose entire characterization boils down to him being some variety of Native American. Actually, his whole team has a clear Doc Savage tone to it--there's tough guy-in-chief Gray Pierce, with his porn star name and huge list of exes! And ugly yet charismatic Monk Kokkalis, with his prosthetic hand, and his gorgeous red-headed scientist wife! And Rachel, a Vatican City cop with an explorer-priest uncle! And the mysterious Seichan, a half-Vietnamese rogue assassin who works sometimes for the Guild (Big Evil, SMERSH-style), sometimes for herself!
In Black Order, Sigma Force fights neo-Nazis looking to revive the World War II phase-shifting weapon once known as "the Bell", whereas in The Last Oracle, it was Russians trying to modify autistic kids so that they would become the equivalent of modern-day prophets. He's also fond of human-animal hybrids and forced evolution, as in Altar of Eden, and in The Doomsday Key he seems to have just shaken up a whole lot of shit in a bag and let it fall where it may: Oh, maybe the Fomori were Ancient Egyptians who'd migrated to Celtic Britain? Sure, why not? And maybe every place is says "vastare" in the Domesday Book, it actually means "whole towns full of people who starved to death because mushrooms had grown overnight inside their stomachs, rendering their digestive tracks unworkable"? Throw in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and militant overpopulation activism in on top, and you're golden.
Like Dan Brown, Rollins is a big fan of the narrative school which dictates that every chapter must end with a cliff-hanger. Unlike Brown, however, Rollins can at least fashion an explicable sentence (most of the time), and whenever one of his characters starts soapboxing extra-hard, it usually means they're A) crazy and B) evil. Writing true airport books is fast becoming a dying art, but he's definitely got it down.;)
Most recently, I blew through four James Rollins books in about as many days. No, I didn't have to pay for them, thankfully; I scooped them up from the condo "library" downstairs, where somebody equally shame-faced had recycled them. For those who don't know his work, Rollins specializes in rollicking adventure built around huge research/expositional chunks. What he seems to like to do is stumble across something neat-o, then build it into a far-reaching pseudo-scientific conspiracy, often with archaeological trappings. Those of you who like this sort of thing may find this the sort of thing you like, while those of you who look for realism and believable characterization? Not so much.
Rollins' books go down easy, and exit the consciousness pretty much the same way. In many cases, I can later recall big chunks of detail, but not much about the actual plot. Like Amazonia, for example, in which one guy had a jaguar for a pet, and there was an evil French mercenary with a sexy Yamomamo girlfriend who made shrunken heads out of people while they were still alive! Whereas the plot was about...a tree? That gave you cancer? But could also heal you, because at one point two people had sex in it while hiding from amphibious piranha, and it cured the chick's infertility?
...yeah, pretty sure. Anyhow, it was a fast read.
A lot of his books involve a top secret super-science anti-terrorism think-tank called Sigma Force, run by a dude named Painter, whose entire characterization boils down to him being some variety of Native American. Actually, his whole team has a clear Doc Savage tone to it--there's tough guy-in-chief Gray Pierce, with his porn star name and huge list of exes! And ugly yet charismatic Monk Kokkalis, with his prosthetic hand, and his gorgeous red-headed scientist wife! And Rachel, a Vatican City cop with an explorer-priest uncle! And the mysterious Seichan, a half-Vietnamese rogue assassin who works sometimes for the Guild (Big Evil, SMERSH-style), sometimes for herself!
In Black Order, Sigma Force fights neo-Nazis looking to revive the World War II phase-shifting weapon once known as "the Bell", whereas in The Last Oracle, it was Russians trying to modify autistic kids so that they would become the equivalent of modern-day prophets. He's also fond of human-animal hybrids and forced evolution, as in Altar of Eden, and in The Doomsday Key he seems to have just shaken up a whole lot of shit in a bag and let it fall where it may: Oh, maybe the Fomori were Ancient Egyptians who'd migrated to Celtic Britain? Sure, why not? And maybe every place is says "vastare" in the Domesday Book, it actually means "whole towns full of people who starved to death because mushrooms had grown overnight inside their stomachs, rendering their digestive tracks unworkable"? Throw in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and militant overpopulation activism in on top, and you're golden.
Like Dan Brown, Rollins is a big fan of the narrative school which dictates that every chapter must end with a cliff-hanger. Unlike Brown, however, Rollins can at least fashion an explicable sentence (most of the time), and whenever one of his characters starts soapboxing extra-hard, it usually means they're A) crazy and B) evil. Writing true airport books is fast becoming a dying art, but he's definitely got it down.;)
That Old Debate
May. 3rd, 2010 12:07 pmApparently, Diana Gabaldon is not so down with the fanfiction (http://voyagesoftheartemis-feed.dreamwidth.org/8060.html). People who are, OTOH, are already getting extremely hissyfit at her butthurt, blah de blah. Not a surprise, but definitely something which comes up time and time again, and is increasingly unlikely to be resolved to either side of the "debate"'s satisfaction.
This year, at Ad Astra 2010, marks the first time I've been officially asked as a published author what my own policy on fanfiction is. The stance I chose to take is the same one J. Michael Straczynski popularized: I'm fine with you writing it based on intellectual property I originated, but can't publicly recognize that you do, for fear of being accused of "ripping off" someone who's playing in my sandbox.
Possibly this will limit my potential interactions with my fans, but I hope not--in the arena of fanworks, I'd like to think there are a whole lot of other things to talk about. Art, for example. "Trailers". Fanmixes. T-shirts, coffee-cups, themed jewelry...the list goes on, and I'd be oh so happy to endorse it all. But even though I myself have openly written fanfiction, and never intend to lie about that fact, I just can't follow you there.
And will I read it, if/when I know it's out there? Uh...maybe hell, yes. Or maybe not.
To quote the classic BBC miniseries House of Cards: "I'm sure I couldn't possibly comment."
Amended to add: Oh my God, though, this is the funniest response-comment ever--
Oh, blech. Depressing, but not really surprising, isn't it? I have this theory that most published authors are feral fans who never learned to share with the group.
Um...whaaaah?!?
No, no. Let me explain: No matter where she started off (she wrote romance fanfiction! So she can STFU!), what she is doing right now is simply quantifiably different. And you could do it too! I mean, you're past the hard part: You already know how to write. After that, it's easy.
Say I like Daken Akihiro (which I do). Say I want to write about him. I could write some fanfiction, certainly; I could even lobby Marvel for a shot at Marjorie M. Liu's job, unlikely as that seems. Or...
I could figure out what I like most about Daken, and make a whole new character from his parts who would then belong to me, irrevocably. And stick them in a whole new narrative. Say one where we explore explicitly the implication that the Howlett pack are essentially lycanthropes, or maybe human-thropes--animals that can mimic humans so well, they seem all-but-indistinguishable until their claws pop out. Play with the pheremone thing--hell, give it to everybody. Give them squid-like, chameleon-like powers to help them hide and mimic better. Figure out pack heirarchy; how is growing up "inside" different from growing up "outside"? What if you can shift sex as well as shape? Genetic markers? Line of descent? Some animals can choose whether or not to get pregnant when they have sex. Some can carry their fertilized eggs "apart", and choose when to bring them to term. Neat-o!
(And now I seem to have suddenly turned into James Rollins. But you get where I'm going here, right?)
That's all it takes, and you would get something that's yours, which you would then have a perfect (indeed, legal) right to disseminate or retain/protect as you see fit. And people could write fanfic about your stuff, which you could then celebrate, denounce OR ignore, for exactly the same reason. I really don't see a down-side.
And this:
It's a conversation; a dialogue, if you will. You write, others respond. The book doesn't exist in isolation; it's something that we make together. Found art, collage, appropriation, pop art: these aren't immoral. Are you saying I can't write criticism of your work? Appreciation of your work? You could say that, but you'd be an idiot. So meta is okay. Reviews are okay. Recommendations are okay. Critique is okay. Fanworks, by the way, are all these things.
The funny part is? I agree with each of these points, save one: We did not "make"/write the book together, ma'am. I wrote it by myself. You're perfectly correct that I can't stop you from doing what you like with it afterwards, but when I wrote it? I was alone. You were not there. Please do not attempt to take retroactive ownership of my work, especially since I know damn well you're probably pretty annoyed by the concept of fanfic plagiarization.
Okay, there. Thus (finally) endeth the whatever.
This year, at Ad Astra 2010, marks the first time I've been officially asked as a published author what my own policy on fanfiction is. The stance I chose to take is the same one J. Michael Straczynski popularized: I'm fine with you writing it based on intellectual property I originated, but can't publicly recognize that you do, for fear of being accused of "ripping off" someone who's playing in my sandbox.
Possibly this will limit my potential interactions with my fans, but I hope not--in the arena of fanworks, I'd like to think there are a whole lot of other things to talk about. Art, for example. "Trailers". Fanmixes. T-shirts, coffee-cups, themed jewelry...the list goes on, and I'd be oh so happy to endorse it all. But even though I myself have openly written fanfiction, and never intend to lie about that fact, I just can't follow you there.
And will I read it, if/when I know it's out there? Uh...maybe hell, yes. Or maybe not.
To quote the classic BBC miniseries House of Cards: "I'm sure I couldn't possibly comment."
Amended to add: Oh my God, though, this is the funniest response-comment ever--
Oh, blech. Depressing, but not really surprising, isn't it? I have this theory that most published authors are feral fans who never learned to share with the group.
Um...whaaaah?!?
No, no. Let me explain: No matter where she started off (she wrote romance fanfiction! So she can STFU!), what she is doing right now is simply quantifiably different. And you could do it too! I mean, you're past the hard part: You already know how to write. After that, it's easy.
Say I like Daken Akihiro (which I do). Say I want to write about him. I could write some fanfiction, certainly; I could even lobby Marvel for a shot at Marjorie M. Liu's job, unlikely as that seems. Or...
I could figure out what I like most about Daken, and make a whole new character from his parts who would then belong to me, irrevocably. And stick them in a whole new narrative. Say one where we explore explicitly the implication that the Howlett pack are essentially lycanthropes, or maybe human-thropes--animals that can mimic humans so well, they seem all-but-indistinguishable until their claws pop out. Play with the pheremone thing--hell, give it to everybody. Give them squid-like, chameleon-like powers to help them hide and mimic better. Figure out pack heirarchy; how is growing up "inside" different from growing up "outside"? What if you can shift sex as well as shape? Genetic markers? Line of descent? Some animals can choose whether or not to get pregnant when they have sex. Some can carry their fertilized eggs "apart", and choose when to bring them to term. Neat-o!
(And now I seem to have suddenly turned into James Rollins. But you get where I'm going here, right?)
That's all it takes, and you would get something that's yours, which you would then have a perfect (indeed, legal) right to disseminate or retain/protect as you see fit. And people could write fanfic about your stuff, which you could then celebrate, denounce OR ignore, for exactly the same reason. I really don't see a down-side.
And this:
It's a conversation; a dialogue, if you will. You write, others respond. The book doesn't exist in isolation; it's something that we make together. Found art, collage, appropriation, pop art: these aren't immoral. Are you saying I can't write criticism of your work? Appreciation of your work? You could say that, but you'd be an idiot. So meta is okay. Reviews are okay. Recommendations are okay. Critique is okay. Fanworks, by the way, are all these things.
The funny part is? I agree with each of these points, save one: We did not "make"/write the book together, ma'am. I wrote it by myself. You're perfectly correct that I can't stop you from doing what you like with it afterwards, but when I wrote it? I was alone. You were not there. Please do not attempt to take retroactive ownership of my work, especially since I know damn well you're probably pretty annoyed by the concept of fanfic plagiarization.
Okay, there. Thus (finally) endeth the whatever.