Micro Sci-Fi: Night of the Garlic Bread
Writer of weird fiction and Guardian columnist Damien Walter is featuring what he calls “Micro Sci-Fi” on his website: single sentence stories bringing together at least two current developments in science, technology or the humanities. Here’s my stab:
World’s first lab-grown meat restaurant franchise features man steak on menu, as another city quarantined in zombie apocalypse.
Why do we do it?
We work long hours – and for most of us those hours are squeezed in around a full-time day job, so we can end up working ridiculously long weeks.
We use our weekends and holidays. What is this thing they call ‘leisure time’?
We make those around us compromise to accommodate this thing that we do. And, making that worse, we can see their sacrifices, and god but that feels selfish sometimes.
The money? Hah, the money. For most of us, every pay cheque is the bonus, not the salary. Most writers can’t make a good living from what they do. They rely on other sources of income to pay the bills. Calculate the hourly rate from your writing income. Go on. It’s not even close to minimum wage, is it?
The recognition. Well yes, a good review is nice, but most books get a flurry of attention and then, at best, stay in print and available. And while the positive reactions are great, every book, every story we put out there is setting us up for a slap. Sometimes the slap is well-deserved, but often we get slapped by people who have agendas or petty jealousies of their own. And all too often it’s the negative whiners who are more motivated to comment than the many who read and enjoy our work.
We’re all too aware of our own shortcomings. It’s a rare writer who is satisfied with their latest work. We see the straining plot, patched over and flimsy. We see the characters and settings that just don’t quite take the shape we had seen in that initial flash of inspiration. We always know we could, and should, do better.
And more…
So: why do we do this writing thing?
We work long hours because we choose to, because anyone dedicated to their art would do nothing else. How could we not write?
We compromise on many aspects of our lives, and we’re aware of the impact this has, but then the people around us love us for who we are, and a central part of that is that we’re writers. Sometimes it’s tough, but then that’s life.
And sometimes the money is good. Some of us can do this thing full-time. Sometimes a movie option pays for the good things, or a book advance pays off those debts and that’s a bonus most people never get.
Recognition is good. Interaction with readers can be incredibly rewarding and stimulating. That fan mail from a teenager about to start one of my books for the third time is one of the most positive things that’s ever happened to me. The tweets that tell the world how much someone has liked your story. Writing should never be an ego trip, but hey, we all have egos, don’t we?
And if we weren’t aware of our own shortcomings how would we ever improve? I really would hate to write the perfect story. I always want to write a story better than I ever have before. And I want the next one to be better. I want to create something new, something that no one else has ever experienced, and I want to share that with people – I want other people to get some of the magic of creating something new.
That’s why we do it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way*.
* Okay, a few more movie options wouldn’t go amiss, but apart from that…
Simultaneous release, or not?
It’s a simple question: as infinity plus starts to release both print and ebook editions of some* of our books, should the two versions be launched simultaneously or not?
The ebook edition is so much speedier to produce: we could release ebooks of our next books from Iain Rowan and Eric Brown within a few days if we chose to. The print editions take much longer: right now we’re waiting for physical proofs of these two to be delivered; when we finally give the go-ahead for distribution, it’s likely to take a few weeks more until they’re widely available.
So: should we delay the ebooks so that both editions can come out together, or should we just plunge in as and when the different editions are ready?
* Why will only some of our books have print editions? We decide on a case by case basis. In many cases, we have electronic rights but another publisher still has print rights, so we can only do the ebook edition. In other cases, while the print rights may be available, if a print edition has already been produced that format might be less viable for us to re-release. Our first three print books have never had a print edition before, and only one of them has been out as an ebook: Ghostwriting, a new collection of psychological horror from Eric Brown will be published for the first time in ebook and print editions, as will Iain Rowan’s Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger-shortlisted novel One of Us; Kaitlin Queen’s adult crime debut, One More Unfortunate, appeared in an ebook edition just over a year ago, but has not previously had a print edition.
Snapshots: Gary Gibson interviewed
What are you working on now?
At the moment, I’m working on my eighth novel, River of Light. It’s set in the same universe as my Shoal Sequence books, which follow a woman named Dakota Merrick through the seismic upheavals in human society some centuries in the future produced by the opening of a technological pandora’s box. This book, however, features new characters and a new story, although the astute reader will recognise one or two characters from previous novels.
What have you recently finished?
I recently finished a book which is coming out later this year, called The Thousand Emperors. It’s a sequel of sorts to a previous novel called Final Days, which was about the end of the world.
Describe your typical writing day.
My writing day typically starts with vast bouts of procrastination overcome only by sheer force of will and half a gallon of coffee. I always read those accounts of authors who get up at the crack of dawn, drink a gallon of vegetable juice and then crank out fifty pages of brilliant, insightful prose before going on a twenty-mile run before midday with envy and, I think, a touch of scepticism. Mostly I just drink coffee, make ‘bleurgh’ noises at my laptop and click-trance my way into such a profound state of boredom that I realise I would actually rather do some writing on my book than go on. It truly astounds me that this hopeless, pathetic process somehow produces a book a year.
What would you draw attention to from your back-list?
Out of all my back list Stealing Light seems to get the most attention. It was my third book, and a borderline bestseller, which was nice given my second kind of tanked. But I still have affection for that second book (called Against Gravity). It’s like Marmite: you either get the ending, or you truly, absolutely hate it. And yet I can’t see any other way the book could possibly have ended, and it does have its fans (slight spoiler: I stole the ending from John Carpenter’s The Thing). I’m still proud of it, and not just because it’s the only one of my books so far which actually got an enquiry about rights from Hollywood. It’s easy to say I wish I could write it again because one of the dangers of being a novelist is that you want to rewrite everything you’ve ever written, including the book you just handed in five minutes ago. But I do think one day I want to explore the same themes in another book. But if I was going to say ‘take a look at this’ out of all my work, it would be that one. Plus, it’s just been reissued for Kindle (as has my first novel, Angel Stations), and will be reappearing later this year in a new print edition.
Which other authors or books do you think deserve a plug?
I can think of a few writers I’d like to plug, but I may have to claim self-interest as I publish some of them through my recently-started ebook reprint label Brain In A Jar Books. We’ve got work coming out from writers of the calibre of Hal Duncan, Mike Cobley and Phil Raines – Phil has never published a novel, but has produced nearly two dozen pro-published short stories, many of which have won literary prizes or appeared in Year’s Best SF anthologies. I’ll be publishing the first ever collection of his short fiction in the next couple of months.
Apart from that, there’s a few excellent writers making good use of Kindle to publish their own work, in parallel with their regular work for major publishing companies. William King writes for Warhammer, but is publishing several fantasy novels as ebook originals. So is KW Jeter, who’s written some of my favourite novels over the past twenty or thirty years.
Also, everyone should go out right now and harangue Simon Ings until he produces ebook versions of his fabulous novels, which were at times a huge influence on my own work, and which were certainly the inspiration for Against Gravity.
If you were to offer one snippet of writing advice what would it be?
The best writing advice in five words: just tell the damn story. Look at the very greatest writers, from Hemingway to Shepard: what do they do? They just tell the damn story. Concisely, using just the right words, without going off track or losing the point. That’s what you’re aiming to do as a writer. Tell the damn story – succinctly, clearly, and with focus. And yet the world is filled with would-be writers who simply cannot grasp this simple truth. I like to think I’m getting there, slowly.
So… the easy one: what’s the future of publishing? How will writers be making a living and publishing in five or ten years? What will readers be reading?
The future of publishing is a good one for writers, I think. I still believe very much in the necessity of the professional publishing marketplace, but writers finally have an opportunity to sell their own stuff in parallel with that, especially stuff which might be just as good as their work accepted by publishers, but which is nonetheless of sufficiently niche interest that is unlikely to be profitable for those publishers. What’s nice is that with the publisher out of the loop, even a niche market can sometimes prove to be quite profitable. The aforementioned William King is producing a series of ‘Lovecraftian gunpowder fantasy’ novels, hardly an easy sell in this day and age to a major publisher, and yet he’s making something like an actual living out of selling them direct.
Ten years from now, we will see ‘espresso’ book boutiques in dedicated Amazon stores in every city in the world, producing freshly minted copies of any book in existence. Twenty years from now, a more advanced version of that machine will be in your kitchen, or living room, and will be knocking out spoons, remote controls and random bits and bobs from downloaded ‘maker’ recipes along with the current bestseller. And major military interventions will take place over issues of copyright. I’m not kidding.
More…
Gary Gibson is a Scottish science fiction author published in the UK by Pan Macmillan/Tor UK, and represented by The Dorian Literary Agency. His most recent book is Final Days, published in August 2011. Find out more about Gary and his work at his blog, White Screen of Despair.
Gary Gibson wrote the chapter ‘From slide–rules to techno–mystics: hard sf’s battle for the imagination’ in Strange Divisions and Alien Territories: the sub-genres of science fiction (edited by Keith Brooke, published by Palgrave Macmillan, February 2012).
Buy stuff:
- Strange Divisions and Alien Territories: the sub-genres of science fiction
Amazon US | Amazon UK| Barnes and Noble
- Stealing Light
Amazon US | Amazon UK| Barnes and Noble
- Against Gravity
Amazon US | Amazon UK| Barnes and Noble
- Final Days
Amazon US | Amazon UK- Brain In A Jar Books
Coming soon: Ghostwriting by Eric Brown
Coming soon, in ebook and print editions:
Ghostwriting by Eric Brown
Over the course of a career spanning twenty five years, Eric Brown has written just a handful of horror and ghost stories – and all of them are collected here. They range from the gentle, psychological chiller “The House” to the more overtly fantastical horror of “Li Ketsuwan”, from the contemporary science fiction of “The Memory of Joy” to the almost-mainstream of “The Man Who Never Read Novels”. What they have in common is a concern for character and the need to tell a story. Ghostwriting is Eric brown at his humane and compelling best.
“British writing with a deft, understated touch: wonderful”—New Scientist
“Eric Brown has an enviable talent for writing stories which are the essence of modern science fiction and yet show a passionate concern for the human predicament and human values”—Bob Shaw
“SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility”—Paul McAuley
Forthcoming titles in ebook and print
Yes, this post’s title says ‘print’.
We’re very pleased to announce that our next title, Iain Rowan’s superb debut crime novel One Of Us, will be available in both ebook and print editions. Iain has won the Derringer Award for his short crime fiction, and this novel was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award.
Also available in print soon will be Kaitlin Queen’s crime novel One More Unfortunate (already available as one of our best-selling ebooks).
And another one due soon in print and ebook editions is Eric Brown’s new collection of horror fiction, Ghostwriting.
Other forthcoming titles include Stephen Palmer’s monochrome gothic fantasy, The Rat and the Serpent, and more infinity plus singles from Lisa Tuttle, Eric Brown, David Levine, Kit Reed, Garry Kilworth and others.
How to succeed as a writer in the current market
I have two rules. They may not hold true for all. They probably won’t work if you’re a totally useless writer. They don’t really make sense if you’re a literary superstar or a bestseller. But they work for the rest of us, I think. The rules are:
- Diversify.
- Repeat rule number 1.
Hastily rushing to qualify this, by ‘diversify’ I’m referring to your approach to publishing, not necessarily writing. (Although if you’re a decent, and fast, writer and you have a love for more than one genre then diversifying your writing isn’t a bad thing either.)
Not so long ago, an author’s approach to publishing was relatively simple. Sticking to fiction-writing here, the author might write short fiction and/or long fiction. Short stories would generally be written on spec and sent as unsolicited submissions to magazine and anthology editors; when a writer became more established, they might receive invitations to write for a particular publication. At novel length, new authors would write a complete novel on spec, and then approach agents and/or publishers with a sample and outline; again, more established writers earned short-cuts whereby they might be commissioned to write a novel up front on the basis of a book proposal.
Those approaches still hold true today, and I’d recommend that any aspiring writer should pursue them.
But now there are alternatives. As well as various opportunities among the many independent small publishers, it’s dead easy to do it all yourself. Self-publishing has been around for years, but now it’s so much more straightforward. With the advent of print-on-demand and e-publishing it’s possible to sidestep the conventional route altogether.
Why submit your work to a publisher, knowing they probably won’t read more than the opening few paragraphs at best? Even if they agree to publish your novel, you’ll wait at least a year before it sees print. (There are plenty of reasons, of course, but that’s for another post.) Through the infinity plus ebook imprint I run I’ve had books available for purchase worldwide within 24 hours of the final edit. That’s fast.
Publishing is going through a massive upheaval at the moment. Lots of stories are appearing in the press predicting the death of publishing, with the industry’s bubble bursting as readers abandon the £9.99 trade paperback for the 79p ebook.
I read these scare stories with a pinch of salt; I prefer to observe the way the industry is going, rather than tell everyone where it’s heading. I don’t know. None of us do.
So where does that leave writers? Authors like me, for instance? I have 20+ books to my name, and nearly 100 short stories, not to mention non-fiction for publications ranging from The Guardian through to photocopied fanzines. I’m a fairly typical mid-list writer, I think.
What I do is diversify.
I think I’d be a fool not to want to have my novels put out by a commercial publisher, and I’m delighted that my next novel, alt.human, is due from Solaris this summer.
But equally, I think I’d be a fool to leave it at that. What, for instance, of those nearly 100 short stories? Big commercial publishers rarely put out story collections, but as I said earlier it’s easy to do it yourself. So when I set up infinity plus ebooks in 2010 I tested the water with five volumes of collected short stories. Those collections pick up a trickle of sales and those stories now earn me a small income and, more importantly, showcase my work to new readers.
I don’t want to swamp infinity plus with my own work, though, so for back-list novels like the Expatria series I’ve self-published separately.
And what about those stories that don’t fit the requirements of conventional publishing? My The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie is an adult fantasy story about a teenager, but not long enough for a conventional adult publisher. The excellent Newcon Press stepped in and produced a beautiful edition.
So: rule number one – diversity. I have books out from big commercial publishers, others from smaller independents, I run an e-publishing imprint, and I’ve self-published some work completely independently. Each hits slightly different audiences in slightly different ways: I’ve no idea which models will be strongest in a year’s time, but I think I’m improving my chances of continuing to find an audience by keeping involved in them all.
But this isn’t just a business strategy, it’s a creative one too.
Commercial publishers have specialist staff working on covers, editing, marketing, distribution and so on. They bring things to a book that I couldn’t on my own.
Working with smaller independents, you lose that specialism, but make up for it by working with someone with a real passion both for your field and your own work: they only publish books they love, after all. The production on Frankie, and the commitment Newcon-owner Ian Whates brings to promoting it, has been a revelation.
And running my own imprint and self-publishing separately, I lose that external input (although I still find ways to involve other people and bring fresh perspectives in at key stages) but I gain control and flexibility – and I hope I offer my authors the kind of commitment that Ian and others do to theirs.
Working to such different models stretches me as an author, and expands my understanding of what works and doesn’t. I’m a far better writer for it, I think.
So, the two rules for how to succeed:
- Diversify.
- Repeat rule number 1.
New story: War 3.01
My latest short story, “War 3.01″ is now available in the February issue of the excellent Lightspeed.
This one’s set in the same social-media-saturated near-future as “LikeMe”, which was published in international science journal Nature in December 2010, and it’s a setting that continues to fascinate me. It’s a world where social media has saturated the real world, via augmented reality: everywhere you look, you’re bombarded by messages, alerts, extra information; everyone you meet is accompanied by compatibility ratings and other social data. We might talk about digital natives now, but in this future the digital native generation are the backward ones, falling out of step: this is the time of the ultradigital natives. Indeed, the thought of what this world might be like for a youngster growing up is one of the things that appeals to me, and my next young-adult novel may well be set in a future very like this one. That’s one of the things I love about writing: the way we can keep digging away and exploring in story after story.
Aside: when my first professionally published story appeared, back in 1989, my name appeared on the contents list alongside JG Ballard. In this issue of Lightspeed, I’m listed alongside Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Gregory Benford. Even after all these years I’m still a bit of a fanboy.
Guest post: Worldbuilding… what’s not to like? by Richard Ford
Okay, I confess: I hate worldbuilding! Do I think a map is important in a fantasy novel? No, not really. Should a writer develop their own version of Elvish? Don’t be daft!
Now, before you leap straight to the comments at the bottom in a flurry of righteous indignation to demand how I can claim to be a fantasy writer without a deep and abiding love for all things ‘backgroundy’, let me explain.
Firstly, it’s not that I can’t do worldbuilding, it’s just that other people do it so much better. Having worked in the pen & paper RPG industry for several years, I’ve come across a lot of games with rich, lush backgrounds, created over decades by scores of contributors. How am I meant to compete?
The world of Faerun, in which the Forgotten Realms RPG supplements, computer games and novels are set, was originally devised by Ed Greenwood, but since then he has passed on the mantle to other creators who have gone on to develop its rich history, cultures and cataclysmic events, spanning centuries. Warhammer 40K’s Imperium of Man was first developed 25 years ago, but has since evolved into a behemoth of a background with scores of codices, computer games and over a hundred novels filling the gaps in the vastness of its space. One of the earliest RPG backgrounds was RuneQuest’s Glorantha, which has had not one, not two, but three ages. Count them! And trust me, I’ve worked on some Glorantha products and may well have let slip some continuity errors. Trust me when I say, the long time fans weren’t happy, but in my defence there’s a hell of a lot to know if you’re new to it.
And it’s not just RPGs. Star Wars now goes beyond the limits of the movies, crafting an intricate Expanded Universe which tells its tales across various media and in various timelines that cover thousands of years. These new stories from dozens of contributors are arguably as deep and abiding as the tales of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, to which anyone who’s ever played computer games in the Old Republic, or read the novels and comics that continue the background well beyond Return of the Jedi, will attest.
Skyrim, the latest Elder Scrolls computer game (number V, I believe) is the latest set in a world that continues to grow and expand as much, if not more, than any novel series or pen & paper RPG you might delve into.
But other novelists manage to build convincing worlds, I hear you cry, you’re clearly just a lazy git.
Well, that’s one explanation, yes. And you’re correct, other novelists do create their own living breathing worlds. Tolkien, the granddaddy of fantasy himself, as well as writing detailed appendices for his seminal works completed a twelve-volume history of Middle Earth (albeit released posthumously) as well as the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and more. George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire is as close to a historical novel as you’ll get in the fantasy genre, and Brandon Sanderson has been developing the background for his Stormlight Archive series, starting with the doorstep-sized The Way of Kings (which to my shame I haven’t yet read, but it’s on the list) for the past ten years. Even Joe Abercrombie, who professes to spend little time on background, has still managed to craft a nuanced setting with an ancient and mysterious history.
So your books have no background? No world for us to dive into a swim around, all the while appreciating your worldbuildy unctuousness?
Well, not exactly.
As a fantasy writer you’ve got to at least develop a cursory background, even if your world is just a mirror for the one we live in. My first novel Kultus is set in the steam-powered metropolis of the Manufactory, although there is a world beyond its walls. With steampunk you’ve already got some recognisable aspects, some tropes that are familiar to the reader and some technological aspects that are at least similar to our own. Still, I think I’ve at least created a living world, even if I haven’t laid it out for the reader like a smorgasbord of historical events.
With epic fantasy on the other hand, which generally takes place in a medieval era of technology, you do have to develop a deep history, magic system, economy, etc. And here lies my problem – I’m currently writing a stonking great trilogy of the most epic of epic fantasies!
So what are you going to do? It’s going to be terrible! A shallow two-dimensional shell of a series!
Piffle and tosh I say!
It’s not just that other people do it so much better, that I’m not ready to flagellate myself for my lack of worldbuilding proficiency. At the end of the day books are about characters! Contrary to what you might have heard, characters are the foundations around which a novel is written. In fact they’re more than the foundations, they’re the bricks and mortar. Maybe even the roof too.
Background is merely window dressing, it’s the context within which you’ve created the book, but it’s certainly not the be-all and end-all. You can have a great novel with poor worldbuilding as long as the characters are living breathing people who leap out of the page and grab you, pulling you into their adventures and making you care for them. A world can be as rich and detailed as you like, but if the characters are two-dimensional, if you couldn’t give a monkey’s whether they live or die, the novel is ultimately doomed!
Saying all this (and at the risk of contradicting myself) the best novels in the genre are the ones which combine a strong, developed, fictional universe with strong, developed characters. And in many ways, these two things work hand-in-hand.
From my own experiences I’ve found that a world will develop organically around your characters and plot – which should always come first. When you’ve got a character who’s lived a life (at least in your head) you need to know where he’s been, what he’s done and who he’s done it with. That’s not to say you need to know the thousand year history of your world, but at least an idea of your characters’ experiences is crucial to building their depth.
So will I be developing the world for my epic fantasy? Will I be building its cultures and races and cosmology? You bet your britches I will. But I probably won’t beat myself up if I haven’t detailed who the king’s great, great grandfather was or what his capital city was called a thousand years ago. These are things that can be firmed up during the writing, and if the reader doesn’t need to know, then I don’t have to tell them. All they need to know about is the characters, and they should want to follow them through the story.
Oh, and they need to love them too… or at least love to hate them!
Richard Ford’s Kultus was published in October 2011, and is available from:
