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"RealmShift is phenomenal. If it’s not already on your bookshelf it should be."
"a gritty tale of blood rituals, mystery, and mysticism… grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go"
"A sinister tale of black magic and horror..."
"...stunning supernatural noir..."
"Everything about it is bang on"
“The best way for a writer to learn what’s really involved in brawling, short of going down the pub and starting something.”
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I was recently interviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn about all things dark fantasy, genre fiction and thrillers. We chat about my books, about writing thrillers and what defines a genre. We also discuss violence, mythology, research and travel, podcast and my new ThrillerCast with David Wood. There’s also an exclusive mention of the working title of my next book. It’s a bit over 12 minutes long. Hope you enjoy it.
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Of course it is, but is it the most escapist? A recent blog post by Anne Hamilton (which was part of Helen Lowe’s blog tour for the launch of The Heir Of Night) got me thinking about this subject again. In that post, Anne says:
When I was growing up, SFF was generally derided as ‘escapist’. I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘realistic’ fiction is far more deserving of that title. It’s ephemeral and transient, rarely lasting to the end of a decade. It doesn’t transcend its own culture or time or deal with anything beyond the superficial. However the best of SFF – fantasy, in particular – engages in a struggle with name and thus with identity and destiny.
That’s a great quote. But how accurate is she? I’d suggest that she’s revealed a rarely considered truth.
She says that non-genre fiction, or ‘realistic’ fiction as she calls it, is “ephemeral and transient, rarely lasting to the end of a decade”. It’s true that non-genre fiction, slice of life stories, often date very quickly. But I dispute that that makes them any less relevant. Take a classic like To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee as an example. That book is a masterpiece, a beautifully crafted story with fantastic characters. Pretty much everything about it is still relevant today and it explores some very important concepts. I don’t think a book like that is transient or short lived. I do think it’s escapism though, however much it makes us look at ourselves and question how we might react in a similar situation.
Other non-genre work might date and age more quickly, becoming largely irrelevant beyond an interesting peek into days gone by. Science fiction, however, is way more likely to date very quickly. At the speed of technological advancement we’re currently experiencing, you can start writing a sci-fi novel and the concept is no longer sci-fi by the time you type “The End”.
So why am I suggesting that Anne Hamilton is right? Most non-genre fiction is looking at the trials and tribulations of people whose lives are very similar to our own. They live in the same world, the same time, more or less, and have similar concerns. When we read about those lives it’s pure escapism because those people aren’t us. We might wonder what we’d do in a similar situation, but that’s about it.
When you start to look at SFF, particularly fantasy, you open up doors not available in contemporary non-genre fiction. You get to explore the human condition within a mythic framework where anything goes. As much as stories like this are the wildest kind of escapism, they also serve to hold a mirror up to humanity as a whole. While a story about a white suburban family’s social wranglings might make a white suburban reader consider their own life, a good science fiction story will make us consider humanity as a species. Good SFF takes us on a journey not only of personal exploration but beyond ourselves to our culture and identity.
Of course, non-genre fiction can do these things too, but nothing does it so well or with as much scope as SFF.
Ever since people could speak they told stories. Stories about real people was gossip. Stories about life were myths. Myths are the original fantasy epics. Every race has its creation myths – these great mysterious stories from beyond the human, trying to answer the massive questions about why we’re here and where we come from. Of course, just because we can ask those questions doesn’t mean there’s an answer. Religion is built on the concept that there’s an answer for every question we can ask, and there’s nothing more human than that kind of arrogance. And religion is just where people take a lucky dip of all the great myths and decide completely arbitrarily (though usually by birth) that one is the absolute truth while all the others are funny stories. Which is astounding. But I digress.
With mythology we can escape the boundaries of real life and explore those great big questions far more deeply than we ever can with non-genre fiction. That’s what makes non-genre stuff pure escapism while fantasy is much more. SFF often addresses far bigger questions and concerns than non-genre fiction ever does. Of course, the lines are very blurred and all fiction is escapism. Good fiction is escapism that makes you think. Nothing makes you think more, in my opinion, than good SFF. As Anne Hamilton said, it “engages in a struggle with name and thus with identity and destiny”.
Caveat: I know this is likely to be a fairly contentious post, with people citing many examples to back up one side of the argument or the other. Most arguments find their truths somewhere in the middle, but bring it on. Leave your comments with your thoughts. I’ve written this with a purely rambling mind while I thought about the subject and I’m very open to others’ thoughts on it.
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Did I get your attention? I hope so. It’s International Blasphemy Day today and it’s also currently Banned Books Week.
International Blasphemy Day was the concept of the Centre For Inquiry in response to the outrage over the Mohammed cartoons controversy. The Day is designed to commemorate the controversy and to celebrate free expression and everyone’s right to mock, ridicule and blaspheme religions. It’s also important in the face of increasing censorship of free speech, with things like blasphemy laws being passed in Ireland last year, among other places. The problem with this kind of ridiculous law-making is that it makes opinions illegal. Anyone is free to believe what they want, therefore anyone is free to believe that someone else’s beliefs are complete and utter bollocks. This is not a place for law.
The argument is that religious ridicule leads to the incitement of violence. Which is rubbish. Religious belief leads to the incitement of violence in many clearly recorded cases. Ridiculing said religions usually only leads to members of that religion calling for violence against the intolerant. Oh, the crushing irony.
It’s perfectly reasonable to hold any opinion you like. If you go online and tell people to attack any religious group then you are certainly inciting violence and should be brought to justice for that. Just like when the religious call for the heads of the infidels. In the same way that you should be dealt with harshly by the law if you actually do violence against anyone, for any reason. But if you go online and say that you think any given belief is a load of rubbish and that its adherents are a bunch of willfully ignorant losers, then that’s actually fine. You’re perfectly entitled to that opinion. Just like the religious are entitled to their opinion that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or that a fella that liked nine year old girls was the conduit for god, or whatever.
Would you expect to be jailed for saying that anyone who voted for Tony Abbott in the recent general election is an idiot and should be ridiculed?
Of course not. What makes religion so special that it has to be treated differently?
This crosses well with Banned Books Week, because it’s usually religious wowsers that crap on about banning books. I mentioned Harry Potter in the title to this post as so many Christians in the US called for the book to be banned because it celebrated witchcraft. That still astounds me. It’s okay for them to tell children that a Jewish zombie that was his own father is the saviour of the world AND MEAN IT while it’s not okay for a work of fiction to celebrate a young man rising above adversity and defeating a powerful evil.
Have a look at that Banned Books page (linked above) and prepare to be astounded at some of the books that people have called out. According to the site, “People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and they protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups–or positive portrayals of homosexuals.”
Oh no! Don’t let on that the gays are actually, you know, human or something.
The most confronting things in human nature need to be discussed. Taboos are things that cause division and ignorance. Fictional representations of real human issues are often the best way to generate debate of this kind of thing. Unless a book is a direct work of hate, deliberately targeting a given person or group, then there is no reasonable excuse to ban it. Some things might be considered too intense for kids but that’s a whole different debate. You might remember my post about the Taboo panel at Worldcon where classification of books was mentioned. And soundly shouted down. When it comes to kids being exposed to questionable material, that’s a matter of parenting. Know should what your kids are reading and vet anything that might disturb them. (Incidentally, if you’re an especially religious person, I would suggest that your indoctrination of your kids is doing way more harm than any book they’re likely to read.)
Reading and triggering thought and debate is essential. Banning books is just endorsing ignorance. I should declare a certain bias – my own books would certainly be considered blaphemous by pretty much every religious group. But I held this opinion long before I wrote those books. In fact, I’d love a religious group to call for my books to be banned – you can’t buy publicity like that. Come on, you fuckers – come and have a go!
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I’m a big fan of the site 27b/6. The guy is very funny and sets up all kinds of awesome correspondence where his irreverance holds sway. I’m sure he’s actually a really annoying guy, as one of the commenters (fiona) on his site says:
“i have a feeling that i would want to stab you in real life but on the internet i want to marry you.”
He earns a place on my site here because everything he does is an example of great writing. His turn of phrase is often exquisite. He’s excelled himself with this one and I couldn’t help sharing. The exchange in question begins with this email to his kid’s school’s Christian Volunteer:
From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 10 March 2010 7.12pm
To: Darryl Robinson
Subject: Permission SlipDear Darryl,
I have received your permission slip featuring what I can only assume is a levitating rabbit about to drop an egg on Jesus.
Thank you for pre-ticking the permission box as this has saved me not only from having to make a choice, but also from having to make my own forty five degree downward stroke followed by a twenty percent longer forty five degree upward stroke. Without your guidance, I may have drawn a picture of a cactus wearing a hat by mistake.
As I trust my offspring’s ability to separate fact from fantasy, I am happy for him to participate in your indoctrination process on the proviso that all references to ‘Jesus’ are replaced with the term ‘Purportedly Magic Jew.’
Regards, David.
You can just tell it’s going to be fun, can’t you.
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After six mind bending seasons, Lost is finally over. I’m sure I’m about the slackest viewer there is when it comes to watching this show, but if you haven’t seen the finale yet and are still trying to keep any surprises fresh, then don’t read on – there will be spoilers in this post.
So was it worth it? Lost was a show that had all the best and the worst of big budget serial television. I don’t care what the writers try to tell us, they didn’t have a clue what they were doing when they started out. I’m quite prepared to believe that they had a basic story in mind, with a basic resolution, but then they got all crazy and kept sprinting off in random directions with no end point in sight. When people started wandering away from the show in droves because it was disappearing up its own arsehole, the writers suddenly had a panic and said, “No, wait! There’s a real end! A definite, no questions finish and it’ll be in… err… 2010. Yeah, 2010, at the end of season 6. Bear with us, it’ll be worth it!”
Following that annoucement they must have sat down around a table and said, “Fuck! How the hell are we going to tidy up this mess in two more seasons?”
Pretty much everyone was guessing around the middle of season 2 that the island was actually some kind of purgatory. All the key characters had something in their background that led them to a place where they needed some kind of redemption before “moving on”. The ridiculous “multi-denominational church” at the end was so lame. I’m using quote marks because it was clearly a Christian church and one tiny stained-glass window in a back office somewhere with symbols of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism along with a Christian Cross does not a multi-faith temple make. Especially with Christian Shepherd in the house. At least Kate was decent enough to point out how dumb a name that was.
The truth is, this story could have been really good if they had written it specifically for a two or three season run. They could have really developed the redemption required of the characters, the story of Jacob and the man in black (why doesn’t he have a fucking name!?) and the nature of the island without all the crazy Dharma Initiative stuff and random polar bears. Or they could have gone with the mad Dharma stuff and not had the purgatory island story at all (or post-island real world purgatory). Or the whole Charles Widmore situation that never really resolved into anything and supplied no answers whatsoever. But they had massive viewing figures and a massive budget and they went a little mad.
If Lost was a novel, the editor would be pulling their hair out. They’d need an entire box of red pens, desperately striking out filler, searching for a solid story. Of course, we want subplots and intrigue, threaded cleverly through the main narrative. But with Lost it’s like the writers regularly sneezed new stories into the pages of the script and just sat back to see what would happen.
The end result is a generally unsatisfying finale that took an easy route for all the characters but left numerous questions unanswered. I’ve been having a little look around the interwebz and there are a lot of Lost apologists desperately trying to shoehorn some kind of explanation into the story, but even they have to regularly say things like, “The writers clearly decided to let this story thread slide.” Which is a real shame. That’s why I say that Lost shows us the best and worst of big budget serial television. They had a potentially great idea, but no clue how long they’d have to run. So they just ran and ran until they had to suddenly tidy everything up. I would much rather have seen the show run for half as many seasons and tell a decent, coherent story that was pretty much planned and written from start to finish before production even started. Sadly, that’s not how serial TV seems to work these days.
Of course, many series have no end point and you have a set of characters and a situation and you tell many short stories with a handful of over-riding story arcs that occasionally get resolved. Things like Star Trek work that way and you keep making stories with the charaters and settings until viewing figures drop so much that you get canned. But Lost wasn’t like that. Lost was clearly one over-riding story that needed to be told, but never really was.
A few of the things left unanswered really stick out. Were the characters all killed right away and everything on the island was purgatory? If so, that’s one twisted deity playing crazy games with people. Or was the secondary timeline, with all the characters back in the real world in season 6, the actual purgatory (as seems to be the generally accepted case)? What about the time travelling? What did that actually have to do with anything? If nothing on the island really happened, why were they all in the church at the end as the most important people in each other’s lives? If the island stuff did happen, then that clearly wasn’t purgatory and all that crazy stuff with the light and the island’s powers has gone completely unexplained. What about Desmond? Seriously, what the hell was he supposed to be? Some kind of “failsafe” apparently, a fixed, unchanging point… in what? And so on and so on. That’s barely scratching the surface of the unanswered questions.
The “real world” stuff in season six was referred to as a “flash sideways”. Producer Damon Lindelof said that term was used to imply “that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real.” What? You mean you don’t have any more of a clue than the rest of us about what’s going on. Apparently the producers have said since the finale that everything on the island was real and the people that got away (Sawyer, Kate, etc. on the plane and others before them) lived out their lives while others died on the island, but they all met up in the lamechurch at the end because “there is no now here”. Ooh, way to get all metaphysical. But it doesn’t really add up.
The most likely explanation is the one given by Jack’s dad in the alternate timeline – that is, the whole alternate timeline thing was a reality created by all the characters, with the exception of a whole bunch of characters for reasons unexplained, as a place to meet up after they all died, whenever that happened to be. So presumably Kate never loved anyone again until she died at some indeterminate point when she met up with Jack in the afterlife waiting room of the lamechurch. Same for Claire, who met up with Charlie again. These are just two examples – you have to feel sorry for anyone they might have fallen in love with since the old exciting island days that never got a look-in after the final curtain sometime in the future. So you see, it is the most likely explanation, but it’s actually bloody awful as explanations go.
On the whole Lost was a clever and interesting series while it played out. I watched regularly and I enjoyed it. I’m glad it’s over, because it was getting to the point where plots were running into each other like blind people at an amateur barn dance and it was just getting plain silly. It was clearly going nowhere. I do feel a bit cheated that the whole thing was wrapped up as it was, with no real explanation except vague hints that don’t make sense.
Then again, that’s pretty much in keeping with the whole premise of the show since day one.
If you want to read a highly entertaining wrap of the final episode, I suggest this by Ree Hines. There’s also the Lostpedia, for all the answers you’ll ever need. (No, of course that’s not true, but the Lostpedia really does exist).
Regardless, there’s one thing we can all agree on and all be thankful for. Lost is finally over.
Lost – it’s not a Christian allegory. No, really, it’s multi-faith. Honest.
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Scary Minds is “horror’s last colonial outpost on the internet.” It’s a very slick website that dedicates itself to all things horror from Australia and New Zealand. It’s “unapologetic in dedicating itself to purely local content.” Sounds bloody good to me.
They’ve just posted a review of RealmShift and it’s a great review and possibly the most thorough I’ve ever had. Here’s a selection of choice comments from it:
Baxter doesn’t waste much time ripping into things as Isiah is immediately battling the forces of hell, due to being a thorn in the side of Satan. From here the book doesn’t lag at any stage and actually cranks up the pace as things start rocketing to Mayan Pyramid central, the reader will tend to get swept along in the flow, so just go with it. Alan Baxter has a keen eye for pace and lets his writing style reflect the race against time that his protagonist is consumed by…
Don’t expect the normal horror tropes to be renting a room in this particular Hotel, Alan Baxter has thrown a particularly nasty curve ball at us…
I had a whole bunch of fun with this novel, and yes really dug the philosophical side of things Alan Baxter was sending my way…
An invigorating read that will have thriller fans high fiving each other, and horror fans grooving to the beat.
It scored a very humbling 8 out of 10 stars. The whole review is far more in-depth and you can read it all here.
Very nice. While you’re there, check out some of the other content on Scary Minds – it’s a great site.
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Interestingly enough, after mentioning this in my previous post just minutes ago, it’s now official. My serial novella, Ghost Of The Black: A ‘Verse Full Of Scum, is now available in print from Amazon.
I originally posted this story in weekly episodes right here on my website throughout 2008. It’s still available here for nothing on the Serial Fiction page. I then released the ebook version through Smashwords, which made the whole novella downloadable as a single volume in a variety of ebook formats (including Kindle compatible .mobi and so on.) You can still get that version from Smashwords for US$0.99c here.
However, several people have asked me if a print version was going to be made available. Well, what’s the point in running a small press if you don’t pimp your own goods? So I’ve made a hard copy of the story available. It’s a 30,000 word (roughly) sci-fi novella that follows a bounty hunter called Ghost as he tries to track down a rogue, murderous magic user. It’s got a noirish vibe and blends elements of sci-fi, fantasy and religious themes. Buy a copy now, and buy copies for your friends and family. Spread the word. It’s just US$7.99 from Amazon.com and £4.99 from Amazon.co.uk. The UK version is still waiting for the cover image to upload, but the book is available anyway.
Can you do me a huge favour if you’ve already read this story? Drop in to your local Amazon and give it a star rating and/or review? I’d be very grateful if you did.
And actually, while I’m pimping stuff, don’t forget that my dark fantasy novels RealmShift and MageSign are now available from Gryphonwood Press, also easy to get via Amazon. Click on any book covers at the top or sidebar here to get all the purchase links, previews, reviews and so on.
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It would be funnier if it wasn’t so fucking tragic, but you can always get a laugh when the Christian bigwigs come out with their Easter messages. My favourite so far this year is this one from Anthony Fisher, the new Archbishop of Parramatta (NSW, Australia):
”Last century we tried godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating,” he said.
”Nazism, Stalinism, Pol-Pottery, mass murder and broken relationships: all promoted by state-imposed atheism or culture-insinuated secularism.”
As opposed to the great successes of previous, godfull centuries like, say, The Crusades? The Inquisition? The Witch Hunts? Or even recent years with those not falling to godlessness, leading to suicide bombers, murder of doctors and “honour killings” of women among many, many others?
Sure, Anthony Fisher – it’s the last century of “godlessness” that was devastating.
What a fuckwit.
There’ll be more, I’m sure, but we’ve started well this year.
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This month, Battlefield Earth, an absolute bomb of a movie based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, won the Golden Raspberry Award, or Razzie, for “Worst Movie of the Decade.” J.D. Shapiro, the film’s (first) screenwriter, who also wrote the screenplay for Robin Hood: Men in Tights, has subsequently written an open letter via The New York Post to apologise. His article opens:
Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see “Battlefield Earth.”
Clearly anything as heavily reliant on Scientology mythos and involvement is bound to start stinking up the place pretty quickly, but Shapiro is quick to point out that his original screenplay was very different to the movie that eventually got made.
It wasn’t as I intended — promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.
However, I have the utmost respect for the guy’s reasoning:
It started, as so many of my choices do, with my Willy Wonker.
It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women.
Trying to get laid eventually led Shapiro to an offer to write a movie and lunch with John Travolta. Anything that starts with you trying to get laid and leads to John Travolta should automatically set off every warning bell you’ve ever had, but there you go.
It’s a long and very amusing story – follow the link above to read the whole thing, it’s well worth it – but a few key lines really stand out for me. There’s this:
A few days after I finished the script, a very excited Travolta called, told me he “loved it,” and wanted to have dinner. At dinner, John said again how much he loved the script and called it “The ‘Schindler’s List’ of sci-fi.”
After a couple of rounds of changes to Shapiro’s original screenplay he was expecting everything to be wrapped up when:
I got another batch of notes. I thought it was a joke. They changed the entire tone. I knew these notes would kill the movie. The notes wanted me to lose key scenes, add ridiculous scenes, take out some of the key characters. I asked Mike where they came from. He said, “From us.” But when I pressed him, he said, “From John’s camp, but we agree with them.”
I refused to incorporate the notes into the script and was fired.
Shapiro kept his name on the movie to get paid, and no one can blame him for that. And he is also pretty philosophical about it:
Now, looking back at the movie with fresh eyes, I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.
I like this Shapiro guy.
(Thanks to Chris for putting me onto this story!)
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My mate James pointed this out to me and I did laugh. There’s been some news lately about the Vienna Boys’ Choir. To quote the Times Online:
The most famous choir in the world has been caught up in the wave of paedophile scandals sweeping Germany and Austria, with eight former choristers denouncing their teachers in the past few days.
This stuff is just hideous and not at all funny. But this particular article is hilarious when you read the byline.
Vienna Boys’ Choir caught up in sex abuse scandals
Roger Boyes, Berlin Correspondent of The Times
I know it’s juvenile, but you can’t write comedy like that.
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The website of author Alan Baxter
Author of horror, dark fantasy & sci-fi. Kung Fu instructor. Motorcyclist. Dog lover. Gamer. Heavy metal fan. Britstralian. Misanthrope. Learn more about me and my work by clicking About Alan just below the header.
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