Just last week, I finished one of the best science fiction books I’ve read all year! It’s called Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, and I think it won a Hugo award. My first reaction, after reading the VERY satisfying ending, was “Wow! This book is everything that good science fiction should be!”
My second reaction, however, was a little bit more disheartening: “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write a story this good…”
However, I think I’m somewhat over that. I know it’s not how I should think–I should just write without worrying about how much I suck–and besides that, it’s not right to compare yourself with others in negative ways. Even if it only reflects negatively back at yourself, it’s just not right.
I’m seriously considering writing Mr. Wilson and letting him know how awesome I think his book was. It’s because of books like this that I fell in love–and keep falling in love–with sf/f.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I see a general trend in the genre.
In the early days, the “golden era,” the idea was king and fans were eager to grab anything with a spaceship on the cover. As a result, the best works from that era (it feels weird calling a space of time barely longer than a decade an “era”) were works with incredible, wonderous, insightful ideas, but sometimes a little weak on the characterization, the plot, the artfulness of the writing, etc.
You can see this in Asimov and Heinlein–great ideas, awesome stories, but the characters all feel like the same person, there is too much dialogue and too little description (Heinlein uses a lot of 50s era slang that really dates him), etc. I thought Clarke’s writing in 2001: A Space Odyssey was very beautiful from an artistic, literary point of view, but his characters were cardboard/non-existent.
Character started to become important in the late 70s / early 80s with Ender’s Game and The Forever War. The characterization in those books was much stronger than anything I’ve read by Heinlein or Asimov, and the books seemed to be a lot more about characters than about ideas. If anything, this has only increased as time goes by: the characters and characterization are very important in Firefly, Serenity, and the remake of Battlestar Galactica.
With cyberpunk and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I get the feeling that the writing itself became more important. Gibson’s writing is just incredibly beautiful, with wonderful uses of imagery, simile, metaphor, descriptions, etc. It sets the mood of the whole book. So as the storytelling aspects (such as plot, character, tension, conflict, etc) became more and more important, so did the aspects of the writing itself.
From reading Locus and the back covers of some of the sci fi novels to come out in recent years, it seems that there’s a new trend of well-written, well-crafted space opera coming out. We’re not in the golden era anymore, when anything with a rocketship on the cover will sell and the shelves are filled with pulp paperbacks–we’re in an era where writing as art is important, and characters are more important than the ideas–or rather, where we expect characters to DRIVE the ideas, not simply come along for the ride.
I can see this with Spin. It’s incredibly well-written, both in its art and in its craft. I felt a real connection with the characters, the tension was very well done, the characters drove the story, etc etc. At the same time, the writing is incredibly good–the recurring themes, the symbolism, metaphor, descriptions, use of language, and how all of that ties back in to the character who’s narrating the story–very well done.
What does this mean for me? I tend to get more excited (at least initially) about ideas, rather than characters, so I need to be sure that my stories have characters strong enough to drive everything. At the same time, I need to be able to write beautifully. That point I’m actually fairly confident on–I’m sure I have room to improve, but from the feedback I get, my writing is actually fairly solid.
So, while Spin got me discouraged for just a little while, it was very temporary. While I may not be on Robert Wilson’s level just yet, I am very hopeful that I’ll get there someday. Episode 17 of Writing Excuses was also very encouraging in that respect. I just need to keep writing, keep finishing what I write, and keep revising the stuff that I finish. And, at the same time, I plan on doing a lot more reading, especially from the stuff that’s come out more recently.
