"Naked Truth"
Apr. 26th, 2004 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewbearI'm currently reading "Naked Empire" by Terry Goodkind, the 8th book in his "Sword of Truth" series, and I've gotta say that it's getting tiresome. The first few were entertaining, but both this one and the previous one ("Pillars of Creation") are just chock-full of pages and pages of his personal political feelings dressed up in exposition. When I can skip 3 pages of pure dialog, in which one or more characters expounds on the delights of libertarianism (not explicity stated, but in essence) and other characters are immediately swayed to that point of view, and still miss none of the plot, there's a problem. Of course, with a 700+ page book, you need filler, right?
In closing, I wish to place a curse upon Robert Jordan and his frickin "Wheel of Time" books, which showed publishers (and authors) everywhere that a long, meandering, essentially endless series of increasingly lengthy and trite fantasy novels will sell in massive quantities. If you read fantasy or science fiction, when was the last time you read a really good, recently published, original, stand-alone novel in the genre? Yes, I know that there are good series out there, but where are the good stand-alones?
All book publishers want to see profit, which means that they need to sell the most popular books they can. Lately, this means series. Especially series with already established fanbases, like Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, etc. And while good books can come from such series, most of them are mediocre at best. Science fiction, especially, is getting dumbed down, to the point where many books & series are essentially fantasy novels with "hyper technology" taking the place of magic. (Yes, Clarke's Law, I know.) The truly innovative writing is usually being restricted to short stories or novellas, because authors can't sell longer, novel-length pieces to publishers, since "everyone knows that those don't sell", which means that if you want a fix of the good stuff, you either go to the short story mags or settle for the lesser stuff available on the shelves, which just reinforces the cycle.
I've read suggestions that Internet publishing will fix all this, but I've yet to see any convincing explanation as to how. As all of you know, the ratio of "info you want" to "crap you slog through" online is at best 1:20, and probably much worse. So how am I suppossed to find the quality works among the spam, porno pop-ups, and really, really, really bad fanfiction? Word of mouth could work, as it does in certain fanfiction and slashfiction circles, but we still have the problem of finding referrers we can trust. Vicious cycle.
Now from the other side: If I, as a writer, want to get some compensation from my online works, how do I get it? Selling access to a site is problematic due to 1) technical issues which I don't want to have to deal with, and 2) human nature. I won't go into the technical issues, so let's investigate the human ones instead. Internet users, whether casual websurfers or hardcore l33t, don't want to spend money on site unseen (pun intended). But anything that you make freely available has the potential to become immortal, i.e. copied onto so many places that you can't recall it if you tried. And (brief delving into tech issues) unless you code it so that users can't save the written work for later perusal (which would seriously piss them off, anyway), all it takes is one "fan" or screwhead making his/her copy available for free to make your hard work all for naught.
"But information should be free!"
Bullshit. Inidividuals may choose to make their works, whether written, artistic, musical, or otherwise, freely available. But that does not mean that individuals who choose not to make their work freely available are wrong. Everyone wants recognition for their efforts, in the form of feedback or site hits or guestbook entries or, yes, money. And so long as they are not poaching on previously owned intellectual property, I see nothing wrong with the desire to be paid for your work.
...okay, I don't know where that came from. I stand by everything I said, but I honestly only intended to write my impressions of "Naked Empire". {reading back over it} Okay, I want your comments. Tell me if you agree or disagree, tell me what alternatives you can think of, tell me about the good/crappy stuff you just read. Talk to me people; it's that feedback recognition thing I talked about earlier.
In closing, I wish to place a curse upon Robert Jordan and his frickin "Wheel of Time" books, which showed publishers (and authors) everywhere that a long, meandering, essentially endless series of increasingly lengthy and trite fantasy novels will sell in massive quantities. If you read fantasy or science fiction, when was the last time you read a really good, recently published, original, stand-alone novel in the genre? Yes, I know that there are good series out there, but where are the good stand-alones?
All book publishers want to see profit, which means that they need to sell the most popular books they can. Lately, this means series. Especially series with already established fanbases, like Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, etc. And while good books can come from such series, most of them are mediocre at best. Science fiction, especially, is getting dumbed down, to the point where many books & series are essentially fantasy novels with "hyper technology" taking the place of magic. (Yes, Clarke's Law, I know.) The truly innovative writing is usually being restricted to short stories or novellas, because authors can't sell longer, novel-length pieces to publishers, since "everyone knows that those don't sell", which means that if you want a fix of the good stuff, you either go to the short story mags or settle for the lesser stuff available on the shelves, which just reinforces the cycle.
I've read suggestions that Internet publishing will fix all this, but I've yet to see any convincing explanation as to how. As all of you know, the ratio of "info you want" to "crap you slog through" online is at best 1:20, and probably much worse. So how am I suppossed to find the quality works among the spam, porno pop-ups, and really, really, really bad fanfiction? Word of mouth could work, as it does in certain fanfiction and slashfiction circles, but we still have the problem of finding referrers we can trust. Vicious cycle.
Now from the other side: If I, as a writer, want to get some compensation from my online works, how do I get it? Selling access to a site is problematic due to 1) technical issues which I don't want to have to deal with, and 2) human nature. I won't go into the technical issues, so let's investigate the human ones instead. Internet users, whether casual websurfers or hardcore l33t, don't want to spend money on site unseen (pun intended). But anything that you make freely available has the potential to become immortal, i.e. copied onto so many places that you can't recall it if you tried. And (brief delving into tech issues) unless you code it so that users can't save the written work for later perusal (which would seriously piss them off, anyway), all it takes is one "fan" or screwhead making his/her copy available for free to make your hard work all for naught.
"But information should be free!"
Bullshit. Inidividuals may choose to make their works, whether written, artistic, musical, or otherwise, freely available. But that does not mean that individuals who choose not to make their work freely available are wrong. Everyone wants recognition for their efforts, in the form of feedback or site hits or guestbook entries or, yes, money. And so long as they are not poaching on previously owned intellectual property, I see nothing wrong with the desire to be paid for your work.
...okay, I don't know where that came from. I stand by everything I said, but I honestly only intended to write my impressions of "Naked Empire". {reading back over it} Okay, I want your comments. Tell me if you agree or disagree, tell me what alternatives you can think of, tell me about the good/crappy stuff you just read. Talk to me people; it's that feedback recognition thing I talked about earlier.
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Book recs...
Date: 2004-04-26 06:40 pm (UTC)I'm rather starved for discussion, and I agree with you about Robert Jordan -- and I haven't even truly attempted Terry Goodkind's series. I got tired of them long before his latest published works.
I like the Liaden Universe; the latest novel, which is unrelated to the others (from what I can tell) is Balance of Trade. The author's webpage is www.korval.com
I like Laurie J. Marks' books all; her latest are:
Fire Logic
Earth Logic
Again -- series both, universes both, magic more than science in them both. Political commentary -- I'm sorry. I'm not sure I'd noticed if it was dropped on my head. But I don't think I could skip pages in any of these books and NOT miss something that moved the plot along.
*bows*
Re: Book recs...
Date: 2004-04-26 07:03 pm (UTC)Re: Book recs...
Date: 2004-04-26 07:50 pm (UTC)Balance of Trade:
In the future (isn't that how most of these start?) humans have achieved space. In their space-faring, they encounter another humonoid race, called Liadens. Liadens are .. physical characteristics don't really matter, but something like very dangerous weasels, if humans are considered a large breed of dog (I think I need sleep, I doubt this is helping). Liadens are bound in a complex web of clan and honor, summed up in something called the Code. Terrans are wary of Liadens because of the Code. Argh! I told you I was bad at this.
The story of Balance of Trade is about a young spacefaring Terran who wants to learn the business of trading from a master trader who happens to be Liaden. This has never been done before -- the humans and the Liadens kept themselves very, very separate. So, this young human finds himself in a very alien environment, where pitfalls can mean a Balencing leading to bloodshed -- and the story is of how he adjusts to it. There's more, but that's my poor attempt.
Laurie J. Marks books:
Fire Logic is the first book -- it weaves a tale of how some oppressors and resistance fighters lived in the chaos that marked the end of one .. epoch, I guess, and before the next one started.
Her world is one where there are five major forms of magic, and if your blessed/cursed with a strong leaning to one or the other, it influences how you think and what you do (this is very crude and not doing justice to how she writes the characters). It takes the tale of fighting for freedom and uses "Fire Logic" to turn it on its head and change direction completely. ^^ I'm sorry, I'm not doing a good job. I'm very cynical, and I can't watch some movies because it's so predictable -- and this story, first novel and second, was so unpredictable to me, and yet, in retrospect made so much sense, I don't think I can describe it any better.
Earth Logic is really how the new epoch gets started.
I'm, um, hoping someone will be able to help you out more.