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On plot, story and pure prose
It’s been years since I’ve read genre fiction. This is not an exaggeration: with the occasional exception of the latest Terry Pratchett (confession: I have a Discworld addiction) my reading list has been swamped by ‘literary’ fiction for longer than I care to remember. This is mainly the fault of my PhD, but also partly due to some vague feeling of guilt – like I’d be considered less of an intellectual if I hadn’t read all the Worthy Tomes of Serious Influence published over the last century.
At least, such was the case until the Easter break, when I decided I was having a holiday and read two novels in quick succession: Adrian Hyland’s Diamond Dove and 2010 MWF guest China Miéville’s The City and the City.
It was the most fun I’d had reading in ages.
Hyland’s novel is a pacy, tightly-written whodunnit set in Central Australia, in the (invented) country of the (invented) Warlpuju people, with a kicky, uncompromising female Aboriginal protagonist. It’s daring, funny and enjoyable, and exhibits an intimate knowledge of machinations that underpin much of life in remote Australia.
The City and the City is speculative fiction in the style of a noir detective novel. It’s intriguing and compelling, and the central concept is so imaginative – like in much of Miéville’s work – that it lingers between reading sessions and long after the cover is closed.
Perhaps neither of these books can be considered pure genre: both provide provocative reinterpretations of common formulae, but they came in such stark comparison to the kind of novels I had been reading that I was forced to think about why. I suspect it’s partly due to the privileging of plot over story in much of what we call ‘literary’ fiction: where plot is the meaning or the underlying purpose to the narrative, and story the actions and events that are relayed in a specific order. In genre novels, it is often the story that is pushed to the forefront: narrative conventions require the inclusion of specific elements and are accompanied by reader expectations, and the writer is always working within (although often also pushing against) a pre-existing frame.
On a totally different note, during last year’s MWF, in the downtime between sessions in an out-of-the-way bookshop, I purchased a copy of Werner Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless. Herzog is the filmmaker responsible for Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Rescue Dawn and Grizzly Man among many others. Conquest of the Useless is his diary from the making of Fitzcarraldo, a film that was nominated for a Palme d’Or and won Herzog a Best Director award at Cannes in 1982. I only read half of the book at the time, but I picked it up again about a week ago. 
It’s writing from life: sprawling and directionless. The construction of the film is hampered and sidetracked by torrential downpours, multiple plane crashes, workers being shot – not with a cameras but with guns and arrows – or giving birth, blowing themselves up, or gambling away entire livelihoods. These events are communicated in scattered, haphazard fashion, without consideration to weight or importance. The examination of a detail fills the page: there are paragraphs on the image of an ant encased in fungi, seemingly alive but for ‘a fine stem and tiny umbrella’ growing out of its midsection. Isolated sentences imply whole worlds unexplored: ‘A Japanese doctor operated on his own appendix.’ A brief meditation on the meaning of opera stands next to cool descriptions of the tyrannical, manic, psychopathic outbursts of the film’s star, Klaus Kinski. And all the time the river holds the filmmakers hostage:
Today the river is completely hushed and glides by weightlessly, keeping to its laws and spaces; yet it always seems to me as if the river were secretly flowing much faster beneath its surface.
It’s 306 pages of pure prose without any real deference to the conventions of plot or story. Nevertheless, as I read it, I was haunted by the feeling that these apparently random and innocuous observations were keys to some profound knowledge. And I thought, this is what good writing does – it leaves you with the eerie sense that you’ve unexpectedly come just a little bit closer to the edge of the universe.
Black holes are cool: Alastair Reynolds & China Miéville
I love it when the MWF puts on a genre session (Frontiers of the Imagination), not only because authors like China Miéville and Alastair Reynolds are cool, imaginative, erudite, funny and relevant; but also because you see young dudes in the audience! I don’t know what it is about genre fiction – perhaps it’s the ideas, perhaps the intertextuality – have the sci-fi/fantasy genres always been realms of youth? But then I know plenty of old dudes (BTW, this term for me encompasses male and female) who love spec fic – but don’t seem to be as excited about seeing the authors. Or is it when people get older they think they should be seen to be reading ‘serious’ fiction, instead of fiction about monsters and space ships?
But to the authors at hand. Jeff Sparrow began by asking about favourite authors, conscious influences. Some of Reynolds were, early on, Asimov, Clarke, Dick and more recently Lovecraft. In the ’80s, the cyberpunk movement was ‘enormously exciting’. Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix totally blew Reynolds’ head off. He found it ‘forbidding and difficult to get into’ but sees now that it’s those kind of books that often had the most lasting impact. Reading it was ‘like someone had finally found the colour switch’ in a formerly black & white realm.
Miéville cites the New World writers such as Moorcock, Aldiss and Ballard as having an impact; and weird fic writers like Lovecraft. He noted other kinds of influences like Jane Eyre and Enid Blyton. He is ‘constantly awed by’ M John Harrison’s Viriconium Nights.
Reynolds had a former career as an astrophysicist and was a quiet writer of short stories – when the first novel came out the scientific community was very supportive and colleagues who previously ‘seemed very cautious’ of associating with science fiction came out of the woodwork as readers of the genre. Being a sci-fi writer has, oddly, opened up more doors for Reynolds than being a scientist ever did in terms of publication in certain journals, meeting science luminaries, seeing space ships take off and other cool stuff. Miéville complimented Reynolds though on the way his novels play ‘fast and loose’ and aren’t bogged down at all by ‘hard science’. Miéville made an awesome point about sci-fi being a fiction of ‘philosophical speculation’, not just scientific – and that of course there are the human sciences as well – what’s the use of depicting an incredible space ship when the characters don’t talk like real people?
Miéville is super interested in genre – in learning the intricacies of a genre and working within it ‘respectfully’. He did this with crime in The City and the City. Kraken is urban fantasy which has no sparkly vampires – it’s making the urban and the fantasy inexplicable. The city, London, ’as a dream of itself’ he later said.
Miéville is ‘a very neurotic planner’ with flow charts, notebooks etc., whereas Reynolds has a notion of where he’s going but then just ‘bulldozes in’. He does thus paint himself into corners ‘all the time’, but he backs out and tries again, enjoying the process of discovery.
They both spoke on the tradition of kinda ‘riffing’ (Miéville’s word) on classics of the genre. Reynolds says he consciously riffs on things but ‘no one gets them’. Miéville said it’s a very intertextual field but he suspects others might be too, such as crime, romance, lit fic. They’d both love to see their own creations and inventions riffed on well.
Sci-fi as a political genre was briefly discussed. Reynolds says he’s left-leaning, but in a ‘wishy-washy, Guardian reader sense’ which elicited quite a few laughs. Miéville is more politically active and he said in the UK he suspects the genre mainly leans to the liberal left, whereas in the US it’s more apolitical or split. Miéville thinks the genre is kinda essentially political because it throws up questions about things not really being the way they seem. But there’s also a kind of apolitical ‘joy’ in the field. As an example he spoke of gay, black, radical author Samuel R Delaney, but said, his books get read because, y’no, he ‘gives good spaceship’.
Even Cowgirls Forget Their Q’s
It had been more than a decade since I had to sit in the sin bin. Little had changed in my absence. I was sandwiched between a shiny spherical child, who offered me a flaky ball of his earwax in what I assume was a gesture of friendship, and a girl so slight, she bordered on becoming transparent. I had wound up in this state of exile after attending one of the many events that make up the MWF Schools Program.
I had popped in to see Geoff Lemon panel a discussion on performance poetry. I’ve been terrified by poems ever since I was a child. Just stepping into the event was like hooking a fingernail under the crisp edge of an emotional scab. Each poet launched into a personal tirade, expressing just enough feminist anger to be labelled art. The emotional weight of their words could be felt in my chest. By the time Urthboy was on stage rapping, I was knee-deep in a childhood flashback.
Standing in front of my year 3 classmates. I was pouring my heart out in the form of a poem titled The Fifth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Upon finishing, my teacher burst into laughter and yelled “Bad poetry, oh noetry!” The phrase became a favourite taunt of my classmates, family, and one time even a homeless woman bellowed it at me. When I came to, I found I was standing on my chair and had inadvertently screamed the tormenting phrase several times. The poets on stage looked as though they were going to evil my face with kicks. At that point, a teacher badgered me into the sin bin. The adult in me wanted to argue with her, but my Pavlovian response to a teacher’s hand claps was to sit with my hands on my head, praying that I didn’t get a note to take home to my mother.
When I apologised to the teacher, I was allowed to leave my invisible cage and moved on to the next event. This was a discussion between Scott Westerfield and China Mievelles’ arms. The two authors were talking Science Fiction and the swollen biceps invited the audience to ask questions. The room was filled with the awkward silence of a crowd mustering the courage to speak. The adolescent sitting next to me had been twitching throughout the talk, but at the prompting of audience participation, his spasms blossomed into a sweat-drip seizure. His arm jutted past chin to roof, whipping an arc of sweat across several teachers in the row before us. I knew by the level of anxiety displayed that he was a public freaker. There is one in every event. When the floor is opened to questions, at least one person will start what seems like a deliberate and well thought out query. This however, quickly decays into a panic fuelled word loop. The words sputter out of the prober’s mouth at an increasing rate until an “Um” collides with an “Ah” and said asker either bursts into tears, passes out, or spontaneously combusts.
Luckily for the boy, the MWF have a crack team on hand to resuscitate and distill the gist of any public freaker. The question they got out of him referred to the popular Twilight novels. Unfortunately for the boy, the MWF have a second crack team on hand to remove anyone who brings up these novels. Upon hearing the question “do un-dead hearts break?” Scott Westerfield slammed an alert button and a group of realist-fiction authors abseiled down from the ceiling, absconding with the fan. One of them told me not to worry, and that they were going to fix him.
I saw the lad towards the end of the day. He sported a tweed blazer and was touting Sartre’s Roads To Freedom Trilogy as the impotent masturbations of a French poser, decked out in the beret and scarf of existential philosophy.
I’m not sure if I agree with him, but the tweed was persuasive.
by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights
Grime and Gunishment
I opened the sleep-slicked slits that I keep my eyes in. Incredible. I had somehow miraculously dodged the hangover bullet from the preceding night. I went to my bathroom to empty the pub from my kidneys and found the water was a deep cerulean blue. I have never experienced a clean morning toilet at my house. Ordinarily the water in the bowl is hangover amber. I took this as an omen that the day would be amazing. Like some sort of giant human filth-covered cup of tea leaves, my toilet’s precognition was spot on.
I felt the urge to psych myself up for the day ahead. I did some light stretching before launching into China Mieville’s Gunnercise fitness regime for emerging writers. This involved gesturing wildly and lifting a vintage Underwood Universal typewriter over my head. After only five minutes, my biceps felt quite authorly.
I was ready.
I donned my blogging beret and sat in the darkness of the acmi theatre, awaiting the spoonfuls of knowledge to be dished into my brain bowl. As I toyed with the image of a wafer and sprinkles being pushed into my ears, an elderly lady seated next to me, leaned over and introduced herself. It turns out, that in her eighties, she followed her dream of becoming an author, penning a successful book on memory. Specifically, the fear of growing old and watching the people around you lose theirs. I asked her for the title of the book. She mentally fumbled for the name like a child trying to find the largest parcel in a lucky dip. I thought she was making a nanna joke and politely laughed. When she introduced herself a second time, my laugh crawled back into my mouth and pulled the covers over it, shuddering the whole time.
I didn’t feel up to a third introduction, so I quietly made my way to one of the other theatres. The title of the discussion was fable, fantasy and the new short story. The crowd brimmed with the grey tan of seasoned World of Warcraft players. I decided I should mingle with the audience and struck up a conversation with a redheaded man who was one part Viking and eight parts dohnut. He showed me a manuscript he had been working on. It was a fan fiction piece depicting the story of a crossover between the two universes inhabited by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight books. The climactic scene involved the heroines from both worlds falling in love with a Viking king who took them both as his sexing brides, along with his current wife Hermione.
I comforted myself with the knowledge that if the older lady in the other theatre was anything to go by, this conversation would eventually fade away one day.
by Frenchelbow (aka Simon Keck)
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights
Blue is free
Irfan Yusuf
Writers are a notoriously unmoneyed lot. (Not you, JK.) So it will be sweet news to the ears of my impoverished friends that The Morning Read, the first MWF event today — nay, every day — is free. In fact, there’s a free event in the Festival Club in every time block of the festival’s scheduling throughout the main program. In the printed program, all the events headed in blue script are free. So, you could easily attend MWF for the entire seven-day main program and not pay a dime. (Uh, hello, there’s even a free wine tasting.) But back to The Morning Read, chaired by Chris Flynn of Torpedo, which features three authors reading from their work, new, published or unpublished.
Forgive the ‘dime’ anachorism above, though such quirks can surely be forgiven in the presence of China Mieville, who read this morning from a new work about created worlds, metamurder and deaths of gods.
Petra White, a poet, and surely the first guest of the festival to say ‘ablutions’, read two new poems that contemplate no less than the nature of the soul. Her poem ‘Machinery’ was beautiful enough to eclipse the (nevertheless apt) sounds of building works outside.
Well before his normal waking time, ex-Liberal Party member Irfan Yusuf read from Once Were Radicals, a memoir about being a teenage part of ‘the Muslim question’. George Bush, Irfan thanks you for the term ‘Islamofascist’ and your various other charming epithets.
Catch the shining pate of Chris Flynn every day of the main program at The Morning Read. You want the dates? Saturday 22nd, Sunday 23rd, Thursday 27th, Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and, phew, Sunday 30th. Don’t make me write that again.
Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger
It’s a booksy life
As you might imagine, we get a hell of a lot of books arriving in the office. In the lead up to the festival publishers send through newly released titles and proof books with their heavy paper and plain covers as one of the ways to spruik the fabulous writers under their wings. Some of the writers end up as guests of the festival; many of them don’t. But it’s such an exciting moment when new packages arrive. It’s like Christmas, but delivered by courier!
I’m still lagging a bit when it comes to my reading list but I’ve managed both China Miéville‘s The City and The City and Scott Westerfeld‘s Last Days, both guests of the festival this year. I’m not sure I’ll have much free time over the first weekend but if I can squeeze it in I’ll be at their sessions with bells on (I’ll probably forgo the pointed shoes though). Miéville has a touch for alternate worlds, layers on layers of shared but separated experience. It’s not too far from own world really.
I’m a geek at heart. I’ve snagged copies of Carrie Ryan‘s The Forest of Hands and Teeth (so spooky I still have it half-read and facing down beside my bed), Megan Abbott‘s The Song is You (for its irresistible pulp cover by artist Richie Fahey), and I’m hoping to convince Steve that surely he wants to pass Ryu Murakami‘s Audition my way, because sharing is just like a big hug. There won’t be much time for reading over the next two months (busy busy whoosh!), but I’ll squeeze in what I can.
Louise
Festival Administrator
