Fiction Fatigue

Oh, go on then
Originally uploaded by The original SimonB

Just finished reading Julian May's "Boreal Moon" trilogy and it has been a bit of an effort. OK, so the three books total over 1500 pages and I have kept to the fiction/non-fiction rotation for my main reading (thus not counting "breakfast books", audio and other general page turning) but they seemd to take an age to get through. I've always enjoyed a good fantasy epic, and a whole new world from an author I have enjoyed for many eyars should have been a treat that would normally be raced through.

And yet, I found myself struggling to stay interested at times and even considered dropping written fiction for a while. The "world" felt right, had some novel twists on use of magic and didn't rely on a novice or suchlike to guide the reader through the system, simply got on with things without too much explanation. Normally that would have me racing through to find out what happened next, but more times than I care to admit I left the book alone and read something else instead for a day or two.

This has been the case with a few other works of fiction of late, but not all. Maybe I'm finally growing up and getting more discerning (I hope not!) but I haven't found myself bored when listening to stuff of much the same ilk. I certainly don't want to give up stories just yet - I do still love a good tale, however it is told (case in point, I thought the new version of Sherlock on the BBC last night was excellent, and am thinking I need to read the originals one of these days as while I have dipped in from time to time, and experienced assorted adaptations I haven't really spent proper time with the source material).

Perhaps I just need to throw some shorter books into the mix for the summer, then go back to the epics when I can curl up by the fire and not feel guilty about time I could be out and about/in the garden/washing the car etc.

Oh, and yes, the picture is a section of our collectionm, not one found just to illustrate the post!

Read me a story

As I think I have mentioned, I do like a nice audio book. Since getting a phone with built in MP3 player I have become particularly addicted to them, but this is an interest going back as far as I can remember. Maybe it links back to Mum and Dad reading to us, then story time at school and Jackanory on the tv but there really is nothing like having a tale read out to you while driving around, sitting on the bus or just wandering aimlessly around town. Non-fiction can also work well too, I hasten to add.

The first ones I can recall hearing over and over again were four LPs of the Rev Awdry's railway stories narrated by Johnny Morris, complete with whistles and brilliant voices as per Animal Magic. The disappointment when the TV series got Ringo to do them... I now have copies of these on CD for occasional nostalgia blasts. Other childhood favourites were an LP of Swallows and Amazons (not exactly a book that one, but the dialogue from the film version with added narration), Alice in Wonderland and, er, The Guns of Navarone.

Yesterday I finished another lot of Terry Brooks Shanarra tales. I know I have been troubled by the continuity in those before, but you would think that a writer would remember chopping the arm off one of his own creations and not have him later place both palms against a door etc. It may only be a fantasy epic but still needs to pass a few tests for rigour!

Time for something meatier now I think, and I've got Simon Schama's history of Britain lined up for when I have time to update my memory card.

(Uncanny Update - on publishing this post Blogger found me an advert for Audible. Why, you could almost believe they search for key words and line things up to match!)

A thousand years of peace

Apart from the continuity issue (see below) the other thing that bugs me a bit about fantasy fiction is the passage of time. Vast amounts of time.

Take David Eddings' Belgariad/Mallorean saga for instance - we have a central character over 7,000 years old and others who have been around almost as long. In Terry Brook's Shanarra series we have over 500 years between events with, again, thousands of years of history going on in the background. And yet everyone is still living in "medieaval" times. This goes for most of the epic sagas out there on the shelves.

Does no-one in fantasy land ever watch their kettle boiling and have a James Watt moment (yes I know that's probably apocryphal, but you know what I mean)? Do the people who build the sophisticated locks for city gates, construct the siege engines, forge the weapons and armour never tinker with clockwork or wonder how the transport system could be improved?

When you look at how life on Earth has changed over just the last 1000 years, it seems odd to me that people we are supposed to believe to be as intelligent as ourselves would not have come up with a few of the innovations we've seen over that period. Sometimes you get pseudo-explanations such as magical accidents making events repeat themselves rather than progress, or evil wizards stamping out change, but still. It doesn't stop me devouring trilogies by the truckload but at the back of my mind I'm always wondering how life would be better if the hero had a jeep or even a bike at his disposal for those long quests in search of enlightenment or a magical wotsit.

Continuity and Conformity

Now just take a look at those books there. 8 volumes by David Wingrove making up his Chung Kuo series. All those paperbacks are UK first editions, so you'd think they might all look somewhat similar. But no, someone from the publisher's marketing department decided to change the design twice during the initial publication of the series so I get a mixed looking shelf.

While that is slightly annoying to the pedants out there I'm more concerned about what goes between the covers than what's on them. Not in the case of this series actually (it just made a nice picture to illustrate the point) but of fantasy and science fiction series in general.

When watching a tv series you kind of expect things to alter between episodes as there are generally a whole raft of writers each tackling their own episodes. They all get written in parallel without the benefit of seeing what has come before so mistakes slip in. What bugs me though is when things change between books in a series with only one author.

I'm not just talking minor changes either - the odd spelling change to a character name I can forgive - but wholescale re-writing of history. I'm currently listening to Terry Brooks' Shanarra series and there are numerous examples where he changed the history of the four lands in writing the prequel - which was the eighth book to come out. Fandom has the name Retroactive Continuity for this and I'm not keen on the concept. If you've established a coherent world I do think you should stick with it no matter where in that world's timeline you are working. OK, so it may mean having to reign in some of the wilder imaginings but at then the author also has the challenge of keeping the suspension of disbelief going.

The only example I approve of is RetCon - the memory loss drug in Torchwood which at least makes a joke of the whole thing.

I'll talk about another pet hate of mine in fantasy literature another time (not one that stops me readingit though!)...