What is it about Mondays? They're low, vile, underhand, snarky, sneaky beasts that leap out on poor unsuspecting authors* what hardly ever did anyone any harm, and beat you about the lugholes.
Which is odd because I never get to that biblical injunction about a day of rest, so why should Mondays be worse and sometimes worser**?
Still, despite the running chaos I do have some positive news to report: You may remember I posted a snippet here about a coal-fired submarine? Got some good advice on that from a reader here... and lo and behold, the proposal has sold -- CUTTLEFISH along with its sequel - tentatively titled 'the Steam-Mole' have been bought by Pyr Books. I think the book could fairly be described as Alt-history meets Steampunk and probably not the clean fit into steampunk it could be. The book does not leave out the enormous environmental impact of coal-burning (far worse than oil, IMO, because of the carbon black) or exist in a quasi-Victorian in which the social impacts and stratification of Imperialism is glossed over. So while we have the Victorian/Edwardian costumes, and the weird steam and smoke and brass and cogwheel world of typical steampunk, I am afraid we don't quite manage to gloss over women's logical place in this Alt. Hist. And no. Mrs Pankhurst did get clapped in irons, but as millions of women did not go out to work in the factories of WW1... the world isn't quite as liberated as ours is.
So I have my heroes travese a world turned into an eclogical disaster area by 20th century industrialisation with coal instead of oil, and in which WW1 was a very brief thing and King Edward VIII never even met Wallis Simpson, but married a Prussian princess to heal wounds between England and Germany. The Empire endured... at least until this book. And it ain't pretty, least of all if you're Irish, Indian, or Australian for that matter. Or not part of the upper class, actually.
I have a feeling I should probably rather have gone with the tide with this, but it's too late now... It irritated me.
Anyway almost all subgenres have their tropes that irritate someone: These are some of mine.
Historical fantasy - what are these 21st century urban-dwellers doing in this rural feudal setting?
SF - What happened that FTL suddenly got so easy? Why are biosystems not at least double redundant?
Urban fantasy - who is that A-hole with sparkles? Where is my stake?
Paranormal Romance - what is this thing with man-titty?
YA - why is so much YA chicklit?
And what are yours?
*and other life-forms, proving that at least they'll your equal-opportunity oppressor.
** It is too a real word. Just not English... yet.
Showing posts with label Steampunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steampunk. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Race in Speculative Fiction
I came across this article by Jha on the Intersection of Race and Steampunk. It raises some interesting questions. Since Steampunk is based on the Victorian era, when colonialism and repression of indigenous races was rife, how do you translate this for a modern sensibility?
The author says:
'I’m aware that other steampunks come to the subculture differently. Our stories are as diverse as our backgrounds, our reasons for participating are many. Interests tend to overlap in steampunk; we’re all geeks in some form or another. Reasons for being drawn to the subculture are various: a love for history, a love for speculative fiction, the giant robots, the ray guns, the fabulous clothes.'
But the fact remains that the steampunk genre is romanticising a period when anyone who wasn't a white protestant male, was repressed. How accurate do you want to make a story, to give it the flavour of the time? I'm currently writing a story set in approx 1840, during the settlement of Australia where everyone is racist to some degree. I expect the reader to be mature enough to see it as characterisation, not my personal endorsement.
When Le Guin wrote the Earthsea books she set out to create fantasy characters of colour, but she wanted the reader to identify with these characters before they realised the characters were coloured so that the average readers of the period would not be put off. So she did not slip in the colour of their skin until the story was well under way. Yet, when the TV series was made, the producers managed to white-wash her characters, which did not please the author at all.
How do you handle the ticklish question of authenticity of historic characters without crossing the line and making them all touchy-feelie?
Monday, October 25, 2010
Steam Punk, and my thoughts on marketing
I thought I'd celebrate Sarah's drive to make me work harder with a first snippet of the Steam Punk thing I've been intermittantly working at - which is aimed at 11-14 year olds. Any submarine experts willing to offer me advice... I'd be very grateful.
The Coal-fired Submarine
Book One of the Drowning Empire
Dave Freer
Chapter 1
It was after midnight, and London's lights shimmered on the waters that had been her streets. Something dark moved down there in the depths of them. Bubbles of smoke belched up in its wake. No one was likely to notice. The still, warm air already reeked of coal smoke, and the rotting ooze overlying the drowned Landsdown Way bubbled anyway.
The dark shadow slipped onwards into Wandsworth canal, and down into Nine Elms and then through the rotting concrete teeth into the deep channel.
Like the rest of the crew, Tim Barnabas let out a sigh of relief. He knew all about the dangers of the Stockwell tube run -- dead trees, fallen masonry, and, of course, the chance of detection in relatively shallow waters that had once been London's streets.
"Up snuiver, Submariner," said Captain Malkis. "Let's breathe before we head down-channel."
Tim worked the brass-crank with a will, sending the breathing pipe to the surface of the Thames Estuary.
He swallowed hard to sort out the effect of the pressure change on his ears.
And then an explosion rocked the Cuttlefish. Rang the sub like a bell. Tim could hear nothing. But he could see Captain Malkis push the dive levers to full.
A blast of water sprayed out of the snuiver outlet, soaking them all, before the cut-off valve took. The Cuttlefish settled onto the bottom of the dredged channel. No one moved or spoke. Tim's ears still rang, but he could hear sounds again, and saw the Captain signal to the Marconi-man The radio-operator worked his spooler, sent an aerial wire up to the surface. Tim watched the man's face in the dim glow of the battery-lights. His expression grew increasingly bleak. He flicked the dial expertly to another frequency. Then Sparky pulled the headphones off. "I got the Clapham Common sender first. Transmission cut out after an SOS. I picked up Parson's Green. They weren't even sending coded messages. Just reports that Stockwell's been blown, and Clapham had reported that they were under attack by men of the Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers, Captain, before they went off air. And I picked up a signal on the Royal Navy calling channel. The HMS Mornington and the HMS Torquay are ordered to start laying dropping mines in the Thames channel from Blackfriars point to Rotherhithe bay. The Captain of the Mornington was getting mighty shirty about the operation not running to according to orders and him still being below Plumstead shoal and not on station."
____________________
The subject of ebooks, self-publishing, new ebook publishers has come up rather a lot lately. So I thought I'd put my thoughts on this down in a coherent fashion. What do you mean, I'm never coherent? My therapist told me that and that I was obsessed with revenge. I told him we'd see about that in good time. Heh, only kidding, I might need a therapist but I believe they want stuff called money (of which I have heard) in exchange for their services. So as I am writer, you'll just have to hope that I confine my vengeance to merely drowning London and New York in text as above.
Let's assume that you, Joe, have written a novel, and like many tens of thousands of people have tried the trad. pubs, where, let's be honest, they knock out 90% of the total unreadables... at the cost of dumping many great books. And of course, they also take some total drekk, and, oddly enough some books which you may wonder however got through first pass, do well.
You've decided that your book is one of the good ones that get missed. After all, they turned down DUNE. Quality will truimph!
So: you go to Kindle Direct. You get 70% of the money. And 5 people read it and 3 of them are related to you.
Or you go to a new startup. They offer you 50% of cover price, which is a lot better than the 12.5% you might see from Trad. Pub
And, with the benefit of a better cover, and maybe a little editing and proof input... you sell 25 copies.
At which point it may dawn on you that trad pub (at the bottom end) is rather like vanity publishing is supposed to be (and isn't). You get to sell (if you're lucky) 5000 copies, earn 5000 dollars - and the process earns 40 000 dollars (of which they give you 5K) for other people. Now you can't take $40 000, print your book, and earn 5K 'profit'- because you don't have that access to physical retail space. If you want to do that, it's possible (and been done), but you'll need $400 000 or more.
However, if you were to take the same attitude to an ebook (where you can have the retail space) and spend the 40K wisely on a copy-editor, proof-reader, cover art, and the remaining $36 000 on a publicist and various marketing devices (the equivalent of your retail space for physical books), that you could sell 5000 copies - which might be enough to get word of mouth working for you (I think the real figure is probably higher - looking at trad pub - only really starting at 25K - if you can shift 100K, even if it is rubbish it'll find a market)
If you don't have (as I don't) 4K let alone 40K...
Should you just give up? Well, I've never been much good at giving up. So let's look at what I think I can do. YMMV. I've decided that a small Ebook publisher at least gives me a finished product and some less hassle, BTW.
1) I could just be lucky. That happens, you're in the right place at the right time. Some people have the breaks. The bottom line however remains that the more often you try the more chance you have of being that 1:1 000 000.
2)I could get a lift from someone who is well-connected. Not likely, I don't know Oprah and I don't get out a lot in Hollyweird. But at the same time, the more you network and link, the more possible this is.
3)You could build yourself a web-presence, a la John Scalzi or Charlie Stross. Now, this is possible and you should try. But 3 caveats. a)they were in the right place at the right time b)You have to have the personality for it, consistantly. c)Barring right place at right time... this is HARD WORK that goes on for many years. And even then, if you don't have (B) you won't get there. It means posting every day (or damn near, or at least on a regular schedule (I post every day on Flinders Family Freer and once a week here.) I have a good friend who read FFF and said 'I'm funnier than you, and our lives are weirder.' She's right. She also posts ad lib and months can go past. She has about 3 views a week. I'm less entertaining but I have 100 or so a day. And I accept I need to go on for years, that it builds slowly and saltationally and if I stop I'll lose my readers.
4)You can network on facebook. You can also make a pain-in-the-nether end of yourself by advertising yourself relentlessly. 2 minor authors I know have made damned sure I never buy their books. People may like to hear and be curious - if you are entertaining and work hard (like Sarah).
5)You can consider tangible bait. I'm seriously looking at free giveaways - tangible, solid ones - books, corkscrews... with the purchase. Yes, it'll cost me pretty much what I will earn.
6)You can look at intangible bait. Sample chapters, free stories. Not sure either work, but they're low cost.
7)You can try to hitch yourself to star. That's why I co-authored books. Because of name recognition.
8)You can come up with a crazy You-tube clip... working on this. "I said if they got me my author copies of dragon's Ring before it actually came out, I'd walk naked up Strzlecki with nothing else or take a swim with a giant ray with it..."
Ok - more ideas? And how did you like the steampunk?
The Coal-fired Submarine
Book One of the Drowning Empire
Dave Freer
Chapter 1
It was after midnight, and London's lights shimmered on the waters that had been her streets. Something dark moved down there in the depths of them. Bubbles of smoke belched up in its wake. No one was likely to notice. The still, warm air already reeked of coal smoke, and the rotting ooze overlying the drowned Landsdown Way bubbled anyway.
The dark shadow slipped onwards into Wandsworth canal, and down into Nine Elms and then through the rotting concrete teeth into the deep channel.
Like the rest of the crew, Tim Barnabas let out a sigh of relief. He knew all about the dangers of the Stockwell tube run -- dead trees, fallen masonry, and, of course, the chance of detection in relatively shallow waters that had once been London's streets.
"Up snuiver, Submariner," said Captain Malkis. "Let's breathe before we head down-channel."
Tim worked the brass-crank with a will, sending the breathing pipe to the surface of the Thames Estuary.
He swallowed hard to sort out the effect of the pressure change on his ears.
And then an explosion rocked the Cuttlefish. Rang the sub like a bell. Tim could hear nothing. But he could see Captain Malkis push the dive levers to full.
A blast of water sprayed out of the snuiver outlet, soaking them all, before the cut-off valve took. The Cuttlefish settled onto the bottom of the dredged channel. No one moved or spoke. Tim's ears still rang, but he could hear sounds again, and saw the Captain signal to the Marconi-man The radio-operator worked his spooler, sent an aerial wire up to the surface. Tim watched the man's face in the dim glow of the battery-lights. His expression grew increasingly bleak. He flicked the dial expertly to another frequency. Then Sparky pulled the headphones off. "I got the Clapham Common sender first. Transmission cut out after an SOS. I picked up Parson's Green. They weren't even sending coded messages. Just reports that Stockwell's been blown, and Clapham had reported that they were under attack by men of the Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers, Captain, before they went off air. And I picked up a signal on the Royal Navy calling channel. The HMS Mornington and the HMS Torquay are ordered to start laying dropping mines in the Thames channel from Blackfriars point to Rotherhithe bay. The Captain of the Mornington was getting mighty shirty about the operation not running to according to orders and him still being below Plumstead shoal and not on station."
____________________
The subject of ebooks, self-publishing, new ebook publishers has come up rather a lot lately. So I thought I'd put my thoughts on this down in a coherent fashion. What do you mean, I'm never coherent? My therapist told me that and that I was obsessed with revenge. I told him we'd see about that in good time. Heh, only kidding, I might need a therapist but I believe they want stuff called money (of which I have heard) in exchange for their services. So as I am writer, you'll just have to hope that I confine my vengeance to merely drowning London and New York in text as above.
Let's assume that you, Joe, have written a novel, and like many tens of thousands of people have tried the trad. pubs, where, let's be honest, they knock out 90% of the total unreadables... at the cost of dumping many great books. And of course, they also take some total drekk, and, oddly enough some books which you may wonder however got through first pass, do well.
You've decided that your book is one of the good ones that get missed. After all, they turned down DUNE. Quality will truimph!
So: you go to Kindle Direct. You get 70% of the money. And 5 people read it and 3 of them are related to you.
Or you go to a new startup. They offer you 50% of cover price, which is a lot better than the 12.5% you might see from Trad. Pub
And, with the benefit of a better cover, and maybe a little editing and proof input... you sell 25 copies.
At which point it may dawn on you that trad pub (at the bottom end) is rather like vanity publishing is supposed to be (and isn't). You get to sell (if you're lucky) 5000 copies, earn 5000 dollars - and the process earns 40 000 dollars (of which they give you 5K) for other people. Now you can't take $40 000, print your book, and earn 5K 'profit'- because you don't have that access to physical retail space. If you want to do that, it's possible (and been done), but you'll need $400 000 or more.
However, if you were to take the same attitude to an ebook (where you can have the retail space) and spend the 40K wisely on a copy-editor, proof-reader, cover art, and the remaining $36 000 on a publicist and various marketing devices (the equivalent of your retail space for physical books), that you could sell 5000 copies - which might be enough to get word of mouth working for you (I think the real figure is probably higher - looking at trad pub - only really starting at 25K - if you can shift 100K, even if it is rubbish it'll find a market)
If you don't have (as I don't) 4K let alone 40K...
Should you just give up? Well, I've never been much good at giving up. So let's look at what I think I can do. YMMV. I've decided that a small Ebook publisher at least gives me a finished product and some less hassle, BTW.
1) I could just be lucky. That happens, you're in the right place at the right time. Some people have the breaks. The bottom line however remains that the more often you try the more chance you have of being that 1:1 000 000.
2)I could get a lift from someone who is well-connected. Not likely, I don't know Oprah and I don't get out a lot in Hollyweird. But at the same time, the more you network and link, the more possible this is.
3)You could build yourself a web-presence, a la John Scalzi or Charlie Stross. Now, this is possible and you should try. But 3 caveats. a)they were in the right place at the right time b)You have to have the personality for it, consistantly. c)Barring right place at right time... this is HARD WORK that goes on for many years. And even then, if you don't have (B) you won't get there. It means posting every day (or damn near, or at least on a regular schedule (I post every day on Flinders Family Freer and once a week here.) I have a good friend who read FFF and said 'I'm funnier than you, and our lives are weirder.' She's right. She also posts ad lib and months can go past. She has about 3 views a week. I'm less entertaining but I have 100 or so a day. And I accept I need to go on for years, that it builds slowly and saltationally and if I stop I'll lose my readers.
4)You can network on facebook. You can also make a pain-in-the-nether end of yourself by advertising yourself relentlessly. 2 minor authors I know have made damned sure I never buy their books. People may like to hear and be curious - if you are entertaining and work hard (like Sarah).
5)You can consider tangible bait. I'm seriously looking at free giveaways - tangible, solid ones - books, corkscrews... with the purchase. Yes, it'll cost me pretty much what I will earn.
6)You can look at intangible bait. Sample chapters, free stories. Not sure either work, but they're low cost.
7)You can try to hitch yourself to star. That's why I co-authored books. Because of name recognition.
8)You can come up with a crazy You-tube clip... working on this. "I said if they got me my author copies of dragon's Ring before it actually came out, I'd walk naked up Strzlecki with nothing else or take a swim with a giant ray with it..."
Ok - more ideas? And how did you like the steampunk?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Breaking the Genre Mould
After reading Dave's post about people not knowing the tropes before they start writing in a genre, it occurred to me that speculative fiction is a rather arcane genre, with many sub-genres.
I was at a convention over the weekend and someone asked me to define fantasy. I said, 'James Bond is a fantasy' and they all fell about laughing. LOL, because it is. In fact, when it was written it was near future SF and now it is retro SF.
So here we have Firefly - which is cowboys in space. And we have Star Wars which is fantasy in space, just swap the swords with the light sabres.
Once it was science fiction, fantasy and horror, and there was a whole sub-genre of romance that dealt with fantasy-romance, futuristic-romance and paranormal-romance. Then paranormal-romance escaped the confines of its sub-genre and became Dark Urban Fantasy (I know DUFs don't offer closure for the romance arc with every book), but they do have lashings more sensuality than the urban fantasies that came before them. And there's steampunk, a whole movement in itself. I must admit I really like the costumes. Simply spiffy. It's a pity we don't dress like that every day.
Now we have genres being twisted and inter-woven so as to challenge definition. Think of Simon Green's Nightside series. (I really enjoy these books). The series is horror and dark urban fantasy but his world also includes science fiction tropes.
Have we reached a point where your average reader isn't too worried about the divide between the genres? I read across a variety of genres. and like to find books that challenge and stretch the genres.
Have you discovered any authors who manage to take a genre and give it a surprising new twist? Does it worry you, if the genres are inter-woven?
Monday, September 13, 2010
Steaming punkin's
"Steampunk is for Goths who discovered brown."
"It's a great trend in costuming , but the book didn't sell that well."
"It was based on a movie that wasn't too successful. The costuming is popular, but it's so over."
"It's based on Victorian upper class. It was an ugly era. We shouldn't glorify it."
Those are just a handful of the ‘nays' I got on Steampunk -- from people who acquire novels - or lead the thought on the subject.
They could of course all be right: But I have never been too good at accepting ‘received wisdom' at face value. Contrarian by nature I take these sort of things as something of a challenge. This is probably incredibly stupid and I'd be a lot be a lot better off accepting things. If publishing believes it is over... they must be right. They know best, right? Heh. It would have been enough to make me want to write a Steampunk book - even if I didn't have a proposal floating around out there already.
Don't Goths read? And don't people read about Goths, even in brown?
I'm a little iffy about the book that didn't sell too well - which book? My own interest in an alternate history that focussed on an age of steam began with Harry Harrison's 1973 ‘A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah' (which had coal-fired rocket ships), and Keith Roberts's 1968 ‘Pavane' (which was a depressing heavy treatment of a fascinating idea - where the suppression of the reformation had lead to a Catholic dominance of Britain and the World - and steam was still the major power source). I enjoyed Tim Powers Anuibus Gates - even I wouldn't have called it Steampunk as much as time-travel. Or do they refer to the much later Gibson and Sterling's Difference engine? Or Jay Lake's Mainspring, or Meivelle's Perdido Street Station? I don't know. Some of these probably didn't sell too well, although they did get noticed. (Notice and sales don't actually go hand in hand. It depends who is noticing. Literati critics for example tend to ‘notice' the sort of books which just don't sell.)
However, it is fair to point out that Sir Terry Pratchett's ‘Nation' is de facto Victorian era alternate history and has many of the trappings of Steampunk - and outsold all of these books put together, and just about anything else.
I think the movie reference is probably ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' -- IMO the sub-genre has been totally undermovied for its cinematographic potential. What a surprise. Hollywood likes books that out of copyright, so they can make movies for which they don't pay the author, and then secure the copyright to their work for generations. I had hoped that the recession would send them back to their once counter-cyclical to economic trend roots and change the direction of the industry, but it hasn't happened. Hasn't happened in publishing either. Time was when the industries to be in bad times were cheap mass entertainment (movies and books) or beer (cheap booze) as escapism (especially if it leaves you feeling more cheerful for a while) is popular in tough times. The movie and publishing business have tanked along with upper-middle class goods sales the last 3 times, which should make us scared. Message: we aren't seen as good uplift-your-spirits worth what the product costs any more.
The Victorian upper class one I just had to try and swallow my tongue or I might have had howling roll on the floor laughing fits. It's a very PC answer from a very PC author and editor... Hmm. I guess medieval-styled high fantasy is based on a lovely era... for peasants. We in the editorial upper class should decide what is suitable for the proles to read, eh?
Anyway: all of the reactions got me thinking why Steampunk might - despite their comments - actually still be popular. Rising rather than falling. After all, genres and subgenres wax and wane, and then just one book can stir them to life or even fierce flame again. (I notice Baen are doing a bunch of Slowship books. That was dead as mackerel until some blokes wrote Slow Train to Arcturus.)
The first question was why might this subgenre be popular in first place - because if you can work out what made it tick, you can exploit those directions. And as I was once upon a time trained in logic an debate, let's start by establishing a few premises
1)Steampunk is set in a world (either alternate history or just plain elsewhere-fantasy) where steam power is the most common form of powering things.
2) It's 19th century, usually Victorian in the underlying cultural setting (which affects everything from architecture, fashion, to cultural mores).
So what makes it attractive?
These are my ideas:
1) The cool costuming possibilities (and this too IS important). It's escapist, it's fun.
2) The accessibility of the technology - yeah, there is brass and clockwork and steam and smoke-stacks... but it's big old-fashioned engineering. It's stuff we understand. It's quirky, but plausible. Familiar enough, but different.
3)The 19th century was an expansive, hopeful century (at least for the West - which, I dare remind people - is still the cultural background for a lot of the market for sf and fantasy. We're so busy appealing to markets we don't have and possibly won't get, that there is an inclination to neglect our core audience. They still are the people who buy English language sf and fantasy. People who live in America or Western Europe or Commonwealth countries, not Iran or China... yet). This ties in with the fact that Steampunk (with the exception of some of the more literary new grunge stuff - which garners awards and yet fails to get the sales volume) is less dystopian and dark than cyberpunk (which doesn't seem to be flourishing as well recently).
4)Because it is set in 19th century social and cultural milieu it is de facto less politically correct. A lot still rests in a nest of 19th century culturally acceptable ideas. ‘Manifest destiny' and colonialism -- now a prime evil -- underlies large parts of the genre. This is of course correct for the era, and provide appeal to readers right now (yes, it leaves the bad bits out -which I agree were awful and if you were one of the colonised or a child laborer much worse then), when various aspects of 20th/21st century are rather depressing, and yesteryear seems rather attractive. The same magic that worked for fantasy, which has its strength in comforting escapism even if it is wildly inaccurate and reflects an idealised and sanitised view of the very upper class of medieval society. It's why the pulp sf - with a view of a brave new exciting world full of promise sold well. It's why dystopia and tears sell well in good times, not bad. Yes, it was an ugly era. But it was an era of hope - and there was a courage and grandeur to it that seems absent now - which loops back to costuming.
There is an element of wish-fulfilment about this. No, I don't think the readers all want to return to Victorian sweatshops and gin-sluiceries any more than many of the readers of my journey into living and being self-sufficient on a remote island really all want to do all of that... but there are aspects they yearn for. That they like reading about.
I don't think any of these factors have gone away. I do think the literary/new weird tarnished the attractiveness in the current economic environment, and if I was an acquiring editor, that's not the kind of thing I would buy until the economy was doing extremely well. (but I'm not an acquiring editor, and my opinions on what I'd buy and push appear to be very different to theirs. I'd be asking the hard question - why is publishing - which is normally counter cyclical to economic trends now running in tandem with the trends, while other counter-cyclicals - like beer continue to reflect an inverse?)
However, ultimate long-term success really hinges on pleasing readers once you have passed the gatekeepers: I think if you want to be a success in this sub-genre you're going to have capitalise on what attracted people - and that includes the cultural aspects and quirky costumes and brass gadgetry.
So: what's your take on it? What makes it work, or fail?
"It's a great trend in costuming , but the book didn't sell that well."
"It was based on a movie that wasn't too successful. The costuming is popular, but it's so over."
"It's based on Victorian upper class. It was an ugly era. We shouldn't glorify it."
Those are just a handful of the ‘nays' I got on Steampunk -- from people who acquire novels - or lead the thought on the subject.
They could of course all be right: But I have never been too good at accepting ‘received wisdom' at face value. Contrarian by nature I take these sort of things as something of a challenge. This is probably incredibly stupid and I'd be a lot be a lot better off accepting things. If publishing believes it is over... they must be right. They know best, right? Heh. It would have been enough to make me want to write a Steampunk book - even if I didn't have a proposal floating around out there already.
Don't Goths read? And don't people read about Goths, even in brown?
I'm a little iffy about the book that didn't sell too well - which book? My own interest in an alternate history that focussed on an age of steam began with Harry Harrison's 1973 ‘A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah' (which had coal-fired rocket ships), and Keith Roberts's 1968 ‘Pavane' (which was a depressing heavy treatment of a fascinating idea - where the suppression of the reformation had lead to a Catholic dominance of Britain and the World - and steam was still the major power source). I enjoyed Tim Powers Anuibus Gates - even I wouldn't have called it Steampunk as much as time-travel. Or do they refer to the much later Gibson and Sterling's Difference engine? Or Jay Lake's Mainspring, or Meivelle's Perdido Street Station? I don't know. Some of these probably didn't sell too well, although they did get noticed. (Notice and sales don't actually go hand in hand. It depends who is noticing. Literati critics for example tend to ‘notice' the sort of books which just don't sell.)
However, it is fair to point out that Sir Terry Pratchett's ‘Nation' is de facto Victorian era alternate history and has many of the trappings of Steampunk - and outsold all of these books put together, and just about anything else.
I think the movie reference is probably ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' -- IMO the sub-genre has been totally undermovied for its cinematographic potential. What a surprise. Hollywood likes books that out of copyright, so they can make movies for which they don't pay the author, and then secure the copyright to their work for generations. I had hoped that the recession would send them back to their once counter-cyclical to economic trend roots and change the direction of the industry, but it hasn't happened. Hasn't happened in publishing either. Time was when the industries to be in bad times were cheap mass entertainment (movies and books) or beer (cheap booze) as escapism (especially if it leaves you feeling more cheerful for a while) is popular in tough times. The movie and publishing business have tanked along with upper-middle class goods sales the last 3 times, which should make us scared. Message: we aren't seen as good uplift-your-spirits worth what the product costs any more.
The Victorian upper class one I just had to try and swallow my tongue or I might have had howling roll on the floor laughing fits. It's a very PC answer from a very PC author and editor... Hmm. I guess medieval-styled high fantasy is based on a lovely era... for peasants. We in the editorial upper class should decide what is suitable for the proles to read, eh?
Anyway: all of the reactions got me thinking why Steampunk might - despite their comments - actually still be popular. Rising rather than falling. After all, genres and subgenres wax and wane, and then just one book can stir them to life or even fierce flame again. (I notice Baen are doing a bunch of Slowship books. That was dead as mackerel until some blokes wrote Slow Train to Arcturus.)
The first question was why might this subgenre be popular in first place - because if you can work out what made it tick, you can exploit those directions. And as I was once upon a time trained in logic an debate, let's start by establishing a few premises
1)Steampunk is set in a world (either alternate history or just plain elsewhere-fantasy) where steam power is the most common form of powering things.
2) It's 19th century, usually Victorian in the underlying cultural setting (which affects everything from architecture, fashion, to cultural mores).
So what makes it attractive?
These are my ideas:
1) The cool costuming possibilities (and this too IS important). It's escapist, it's fun.
2) The accessibility of the technology - yeah, there is brass and clockwork and steam and smoke-stacks... but it's big old-fashioned engineering. It's stuff we understand. It's quirky, but plausible. Familiar enough, but different.
3)The 19th century was an expansive, hopeful century (at least for the West - which, I dare remind people - is still the cultural background for a lot of the market for sf and fantasy. We're so busy appealing to markets we don't have and possibly won't get, that there is an inclination to neglect our core audience. They still are the people who buy English language sf and fantasy. People who live in America or Western Europe or Commonwealth countries, not Iran or China... yet). This ties in with the fact that Steampunk (with the exception of some of the more literary new grunge stuff - which garners awards and yet fails to get the sales volume) is less dystopian and dark than cyberpunk (which doesn't seem to be flourishing as well recently).
4)Because it is set in 19th century social and cultural milieu it is de facto less politically correct. A lot still rests in a nest of 19th century culturally acceptable ideas. ‘Manifest destiny' and colonialism -- now a prime evil -- underlies large parts of the genre. This is of course correct for the era, and provide appeal to readers right now (yes, it leaves the bad bits out -which I agree were awful and if you were one of the colonised or a child laborer much worse then), when various aspects of 20th/21st century are rather depressing, and yesteryear seems rather attractive. The same magic that worked for fantasy, which has its strength in comforting escapism even if it is wildly inaccurate and reflects an idealised and sanitised view of the very upper class of medieval society. It's why the pulp sf - with a view of a brave new exciting world full of promise sold well. It's why dystopia and tears sell well in good times, not bad. Yes, it was an ugly era. But it was an era of hope - and there was a courage and grandeur to it that seems absent now - which loops back to costuming.
There is an element of wish-fulfilment about this. No, I don't think the readers all want to return to Victorian sweatshops and gin-sluiceries any more than many of the readers of my journey into living and being self-sufficient on a remote island really all want to do all of that... but there are aspects they yearn for. That they like reading about.
I don't think any of these factors have gone away. I do think the literary/new weird tarnished the attractiveness in the current economic environment, and if I was an acquiring editor, that's not the kind of thing I would buy until the economy was doing extremely well. (but I'm not an acquiring editor, and my opinions on what I'd buy and push appear to be very different to theirs. I'd be asking the hard question - why is publishing - which is normally counter cyclical to economic trends now running in tandem with the trends, while other counter-cyclicals - like beer continue to reflect an inverse?)
However, ultimate long-term success really hinges on pleasing readers once you have passed the gatekeepers: I think if you want to be a success in this sub-genre you're going to have capitalise on what attracted people - and that includes the cultural aspects and quirky costumes and brass gadgetry.
So: what's your take on it? What makes it work, or fail?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Steam Punk
One of my friends, Richard Harland, has had a lot of success with his new YA steampunk book, Worldshaker. There is something very alluring about steampunk. It takes us back to an Antique Future.
Before I ever knew the term steampunk existed, I loved Sir Arthur Connan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books. There's Dickens works which are still being made into movies. And my favourite would have to be the satirist Saki. I discovered him in my early twenties and loved his dry wit. My favourite story of his is 'Sredni Vashtar', a very dark tale indeed. And then there is 'The Open Window' which must be a classic of horror stories. Then there's Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain and HG Wells, only none of these writers were deliberately writing steampunk.
For movies that are deliberately steampunk think Wild Wild West, Steamboy, The Prestige and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Those should give you enough visuals.
For a list of modern authors who could be termed steampunk see here. I would add Mervyn Peake, I think his Gormenghast trilogy is very steampunk in it's setting and characters.
The steampunk subgenre has gone from strength to strength in recent years. Here is an article on 'The Victoria Steam Exposition ... a celebration of a growing subculture called steampunk -- which unites Victorian era esthetics and futuristic inventions with modern literature and fashion.'
There is even a Steampunk Magazine. So if you are into steampunk and you can't get enough of it, this is the place to go.
So what is it about steampunk that draws people in?
Is it the quaint machinery? See some examples here.
Is it the repressed sexuality of Victorian England, combined with those corsets and garters? See some of the costumes here and here.
Is it because readers are tired of dystopic futures and want something whimsical and fun?
Are readers tired of epic fantasies set in medieval-lite worlds?
We can look back on the Victorian era, conveniently forgetting the oppression and injustices. Enough time has passed for the fusty old Aunts, who never married because they couldn't marry below their station, to die off. We can look back and enjoy a time when science was brave and exciting and the world looked like it was going to get better every year. When the world still contained mysteries and wonders. And a tennis player could be so incensed by the lack of skill at the Olympics that he could jump the net, pick a racquet and win a gold medal.
For anyone interested in writing steampunk, Richard has done a blog here on the topic.
And I'm finishing up with a delightful image, the steampunk Dalek!
Now, has the steampunk genre snuck up on you like it did for me?
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