So I really enjoyed the first two seasons of Extra Sci-Fi, and since they’ve just started up with season three, I’d like to do a blog series where I react to the episodes.
From the first episode, it looks like the main focus of this season is on Lord of the Rings and Dune, two SF&F classics which I’ve read twice. While I have read The Silmarillion as well, I have to admit that I haven’t read any of the Dune sequels yet. Ah, the woes of a horribly massive TBR list.
In any case, the discussion of intentionality in world-building is quite interesting. The way they contrast it with the pulps got me to thinking about the direction science fiction and fantasy are headed in right now.
With the advent of indie publishing, the era we are living in right now is much more akin to the age of the pulps. The way most indies make a living is by following Kevin J. Anderson’s advice to be prolific—really, really prolific. That doesn’t mean that all books published these days lack the intentionality and depth of the great classics of the genre, but the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction.
Here’s the problem: I’m sure there are books that are just as finely crafted as Lord of the Rings that are sitting on someone’s hard drive right now, or perhaps hanging out somewhere above the 500,000 ranking on Amazon. Perhaps some of these books are even more masterfully crafted, with greater intentionality and even more depth. Why aren’t they selling?
Lots of reasons. Perhaps the author hasn’t yet mastered the craft of writing. Perhaps the story isn’t compelling enough—the equivalent of a 50 cc engine in the body of a Harley.
Or perhaps it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or storytelling, but the author’s lack of marketing acumen. The greatest product in the world is worth nothing if nobody knows it exists. Likewise, the worst product is worth at least something if everyone knows about it.
Harsh truths, but that’s the world we live in. I’m not so cynical that I believe that writing is a zero-sum game, but there is a lot of competition, especially with how many books are being published these days. That’s why I say that the pendulum has swung back in favor of pulp-style writing: because the writer who can put out a book a month and put it out to an email list of 10k or more has a decisive advantage over the writer who painstakingly crafts a magnificent epic over the course of an entire lifetime, as Tolkien did.
When will the pendulum swing back? I don’t know, but it’s actually not as daunting of an issue as the guys at Extra Credits make it seem.
The first time I read Dune, I was in high school. The second time, I was in college, where I’d already studied Arabic for a couple of years and become somewhat proficient at it. Studying Arabic pulled back the curtain a bit, and made me realize that Herbert’s world-building wasn’t quite as intentional as it seems at first glance.
There was still a lot of depth and intentionality in the major stuff, like the Bene Gesserit, the mentats and Orange Catholic Bible, and of course the ecology of Arakkis and the Spacing Guild. However, on some of the minor details, he occasionally cribbed or made up stuff, he just did a really good job of disguising it. Even the wider arcs of his world-building have borrowed heavily from the real world, such as the rise of the Fremen (which is basically the Rashidun Caliphate in space) and the politics and economics of the spice trade (which is basically a sci-fi version of the petrodollar).
This is why I’m not too worried. A masterful writer can produce on the level of the pulps, and still write with depth and intentionality—or at least, fake it so well that it feels that way. Writing that well requires skill, but once you’ve figured out all the levers behind the curtain, you really can pull off some truly amazing stuff.
I’m not quite there yet, but I’ve seen behind the curtain, and I’m figuring out how it works. Until now, I’ve leaned more toward the pulp-style of writing, just to get my writing career off the ground, but I hope to get to the level of Herbert and Tolkien before too long. It’s definitely possible, but can it be profitable too? That’s the tricky part.
