Swords Against Boredom

If you’re the type who loves comic books and superhero movies, you might be interested in my story The Bigger They Are, which went live today at A Thousand Faces: The Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction.”

Here’s the Table of Contents, from which you can access my story along with the others.

The Bigger They Are offers an assortment of heroes, a fair amount of property destruction, high-tech weaponry, a sexy witch, thugs, terrorists and a flying car dealing death. Good clean fun. Feel free to come back here and tell me why you liked it or hated it. “A Thousand Faces” also has a bulletin board, where readers can discuss the stories.

And now, assorted thoughts along superheroic lines:

• I may have to try my hand at some more superhero fiction. It’s a good blend of science fiction and fantasy, and the settings and conventions of comic book worlds leave an author a whole lot of room to play. It’s like a big old playground.
• Not to add to the media pile-on surrounding the events of Heath Ledger’s death, but I want to note that I expect his portrayal of the Joker in “The Dark Knight” to be awesome. I thought he’d be good in the role back when they announced he would do it, and I’m more convinced of that now having seen the images of him in costume and having seen the movie trailers. Legder’s version of the Joker will be the hot costume choice next Halloween … no doubt about it.
• One bit in the trailers for “The Dark Knight” has me concerned a bit. The trailers show a flipping coin, scratched up on one side — the unmistakeable sign of Two-Face, a.k.a. District attorney Harvey Dent. That in itself is no problem; Two-Face is an excellent villain. But considering how superhero movies tend to fall apart when they try to cram more villains into them, I’m scratching my head in disbelief and hoping Dent/Two-Face gets just enough screen time to set up a third movie.

  The problem with cramming in too much is that none of the bits get to shine. Think about “Spider-Man 3.” There was the Sandman plot, the Venom plot, the Pete/Mary Jane plot, the Son of the Green Goblin plot … so much stuff in the stew it all fell apart. The movie would have been much better had it chosen either Sandman or Venom as its villain, but not both. All the various plot elements got short shrift, because someone just had to toss in more and more and more …

  The same thing happened to a lesser extent in the third X-Men movie. Too much going on, so nothing really got the attention it deserved.

  So, here’s hoping the makers of “The Dark Knight” stick primarily with the Joker, and not too much with Harvey Dent. There is reason to hope, since they did such a good job with “Batman Begins.” Still …

• Of all the superhero movies I’ve seen, I think “Batman Begins” and “Spider-Man” did the best job of translating a comic to the screen. I think that’s primarily because the filmmakers paid attention to character and seemed to be fans of The Batman and Spidey themselves. Tim Burton’s “Batman” was pretty good; it had a cool comic book look to it and Michael Keaton did a much better job as The Batman than I expected. The action sequences suffered, though, because Keaton couldn’t move much in that muscle suit. His Batman came off rather stiff in the fight scenes. Still, the movie was a pretty good job of bringing The Batman to screen.
• Which films did the worst job of conveying a comic hero to the silver screen? “The Hulk” was dreadful. Cool special effects and a generally decent actor in Eric Bana were not enough to save a muddled plot and the doofy split-screen, floating-panel approach. I suppose having rectangular blocks drift across the screen, showing the action from various angles, seemed a brilliant idea at the time. “Hey, comic books have panels, right? Let’s have panels in our movie! It’ll look more like a comic book!”

  It looked more like a mess. Although the fight with the gamma-enhanced dogs was cool, and I liked the bit where the Hulk hurled a tank.

  The second “Fantastic Four” movie was awful, too. That was disappointing, because I wanted to see the Silver Surfer. But the filmmakers leeched all the comedy out of the script with bad timing, and leeched all the tension out of the movie with weak dialogue. Just … not a good movie.

• I haven’t seen the latest Superman movie. I’ve never been a big Superman fan, so this one will have to wait until I rent it on DVD one day. Maybe. If I get around to it. I haven’t seen “Ghost Rider” yet, either, but I’m more eager to see it than Superman. A flaming ghost on a motorcycle? Ought to be fun.
• Which comic book heroes ought to have a movie? Hmmmm. How about something really different? I vote for Deadman … a disembodied spirit whose power is to inhabit the bodies of the living. This could make a cool movie, especially with a noir approach. How about Dr. Strange? Occult mayhem. Go for it. Or Adam Strange … an earthman transported to another planet to fight Flash Gordon-style battles against monsters and weird science. Yep.

  But one I’d really like to see would be Green Arrow. GA is more along the lines of The Batman — no superpowers, just a very talented guy with a big budget. Green Arrow has more of a Robin Hood vibe than The Batman. He’s doing it primarily for the adventure, the excitement, to test himself against the odds. He’s having fun. Of course, his targets are primarily corporate greed and corrupt government, and his brushes with the underworld can make him quite dark and disgusted with mankind at times. Fortunately, he’s got Black Canary walking around in those fishnet stockings to keep him on an even keel.

OK gang, weigh in on the whole superhero-comic book thing.

– Steve

We’re still reading submissions for our Carnivah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords,” and I’m confident now that we’ll have enough good stuff to assemble a kick-ass anthology.

In reading the subs, though, I’m reminded of conversations here and there with editors and writers who fear that reading stories with a hyper-critical eye has taken some of the joy out of their reading. No longer do they seem to be swept up in a compelling narrative, or finding themselves liking or disliking a character for odd reasons, or simply able to marvel at an elegant turn of phrase. They have turned reading into work, and it bothers them.

I haven’t noted this phenomenon myself, and I suspect those editors and writers who do suffer from this are experiencing something temporary. I certainly do notice the author’s craft while reading, and I stumble over the author’s flubs, and sometimes find myself pausing in the midst of reading to ponder the writer’s skill and how I might learn from it. But viewing those things from a writer’s vantage — and now from an editor’s — doesn’t take the fun out reading for me. And if the writer’s craft is too evident, or the flubs too horrible to forgive, I simply stop reading anyway.

These thoughts have given me a better handle on one of the metrics I use to decide whether I like a particular story or not. In the works that hold my attention best, and impress me the most, the writer has taken strong control of the story. The prose is excellent, but does not call attention to itself. There is nothing superfluous, no sentence that exists merely to show off the author’s vocabulary. Fifty-cent words, if used, are used appropriately and with precision, rather than scattered throughout a story haphazardly.

And the story itself is compelling enough, or amusing enough, or artful enough, that I focus on the story rather than the author’s technique. Afterward, I might well think long and hard about how the writer pulled off that tricky point-of-view switch, or used martial descriptive words to maintain tension through the non-action parts, or modeled a character after some particular archtype or literary figure.

But I think of those things after reading — in the midst of the story, I note them only in passing. While reading a really good story, I keep going because I want to know how it ends. I want to know what happens next. I want to know what impact the conflicts I’m reading about will make on the characters I’ve come to know.

In other words, truly good technique is almost invisible. It’s a thing to be analyzed later, after the story has lived and breathed.

Conversely, style and technique that calls too much attention to itself results in me putting the book aside, sipping another swig of beer and then looking for something else to read. Authors who try so hard to avoid cliche that they lapse into incomprehensibility, for instance, or offer up a metaphor that clunks. Writers who choose a six-syllable word because they think it makes them look smarter, when a more common word would be more precise and more appropriate. (This is most notable in dialogue; unless your character is an egghead or a pompous artist or a member of the “Word of the Day” club, words like “etiolated” and “circumlocution” probably shouldn’t come out of their mouths.)

It’s a rare thing, of course, for any work of fiction of any length to be completely free of things that make me groan. Even my own stuff makes me groan at times. But I am happy to say there is plenty of material out there in which the artistry overcomes weaknesses of technique, and that I still have a lot of fun when a story really grabs me. Oh, you might hear me howl with indignation occasionally after reading something really bad, but it doesn’t mean I’ve become jaded.

Indeed, there is a lot of good stuff out there — and I’m still having fun tracking it down.

So, how about you other writers and editors? Do you find reading less fun these days than you did before you started spotting technique and reading slushpiles? Enquiring minds want to know.

– Steve

Fantasy stories, especially on the sword-and-sorcery end of things, naturally involve protagonists and antagonists.

Most writers put a lot of thought into developing the protagonist. They give the hero likes and dislikes, qualities and warts, skills and shortcomings. They give the hero a past, and a future to pursue or stave off.

Some writers — not all — give similar thought to the antagonist. They strive to make the villain more than a generic dark lord, with aims more realistic than merely subjugating the world. They try to make the reader understand why the villain is the villain. A good many writers seem satisfied to clone Sauron and progress accordingly, but some strive to do better in crafting their bad guys.

All those other characters in a story, however, tend to get really short shrift.

By those other characters, I mean the types who don’t play a significant role in the story, who appear only long enough to provide the hero with some information, or provide the story with a bit of humor, or hand the weary traveler a much needed stiff drink, or roll down the road in a convenient farm wagon just as the hero decides he cannot walk another step.

Think about it: Heroes in fantasy stories encounter endless streams of gruff barkeepers, shrewd merchants, nerdy priests, pretty girls, mysterious dark wizards, stoic elves, bombastic dwarves. Heroes hack their way through gods know how many interchangeable servants of dark lords. And most of the time, you can pick up the barkeeper from one story and insert him into a story written by someone else — and not alter the story even a teeny bit.

The result is a production-line sameness. Even if your protagonist is craftily portrayed, even if your antagonist is more than just someone evil for the protagonist to slay, the story gets a been-there, done-that glaze.

This was driven home to me while perusing “The Tough Guide to Fantasyland,” by Diana Wynne Jones. It’s a tongue-in-cheek travel guide, offering advice for travelers wandering through a fantasy landscape cobbled together from all the Tolkienesque fantasy books out there. The book, with its dictionary-style entries on DARK LORDS and FEMALE MERCENARIES and PRIESTS and STEW, is hilarious. All dark lords, barkeepers, priests, etc., are pretty much the same, no matter who is writing the story.

Think about that, and think about how really strong writers handle secondary characters. Jane Austen, for instance, in “Pride & Prejudice.” Every one of those characters is fully developed, no matter how brief his or her stint upon the stage. And every one of them is a bit deeper than initial appearances convey.

Ursula K. Le Guin is likewise expert in portraying secondary characters. I’ve noted her abilities in past stories, and was reminded of them recently while reading “Powers.” Le Guin takes the time to give even the most minor characters distinct personalities, to make sure they are people instead of stock characters. Other writers might plop these characters on stage, let them do whatever the story needs them to do, and then dismiss them without another thought. Not Le Guin.

Another thing both these writers have in common is the ability to portray solid secondary characters without using acres of pages to do so. It’s not as though Austen and Le Guin bring everything to a standstill just so they can tell you all about each and every secondary character. No … they insert the humanity in such carefully administered doses it all comes off rather seamlessly. That, my friends, is art.

To bring things back to a more sword-and-sorcerous vibe, Fritz Leiber did an excellent job of this in his Fafhrd and Mouser short stories. His wizards are distinctive. The girls Fafhrd and Mouser woo are utterly bizarre and, most of the time, more than just convenient bits of sex for the guys. His aristocrats are human, and his thieves are not produced with cookie cutters. Good writer, that Fritz.

Possibly, the driving attitude for such skilled writers is this: Every character, every paragraph, is an opportunity not to be wasted.

I think I’ll have to be paying more attention to this in my own writing.

– Steve

Two sales in one day … how’s that?

Invincible, a sword-and-sorcery flash story, will appear sometime in Every Day Fiction. And Vainglorious, my first ever poetry publication, will appear down the road in Flashing Swords ezine.

I got the news of both these the day after learning my story Otrossius in the Nest of Fire will appear in Big Pulp, a new online fiction source. Had Big Pulp waited one more day to get back to me, I’d have had a hat trick.

So … I’m having a pretty good January. It certainly takes the some of the sting out of the horror story rejection I got yesterday.

About a year ago, I’d posted about the unlikelihood of me writing a sword-and-sorcery flash story. A thousand words isn’t a lot for a genre built on suspense and strange lands. But I kept at it, and Invincible is the result. It’s even considerably shorter than 1,000 words, if you can believe that.

Is Invincible really sword-and-sorcery? Eh. It’s close enough for jazz.

Vainglorious, on the other hand, is a bit of alliterative verse. I seldom commit poetry, and when I do it usually isn’t anything at all like my short fiction. This one, though short, has the stuff of legends in it and a point to make besides — and it fits Flashing Swords pretty well.

I don’t know that I’ll be writing a lot more flash or poetry. I seldom set out to write flash; usually, I just write until I think the story is done and once in a great while the story ends up being flash, much to my surprise. In this instance, though, I specifically set out to write a sword-and-sorcery flash story just to see if I could.

As for poetry, an idea generally has to club me over the head to inspire a poem. I may never write another. I may write a dozen more. I have a small handful I’m sending around to poetry venues. I expect to collect a small hill of rejections for those, but what the heck. You never know.

– Steve

One of my humorous sword-and-sorcery stories, Otrossius in the Nest of Fire, has been accepted at a new online venture, Big Pulp.

Editor Bill Olver says the plan is to roll out in early march, with new work weekly and building up to a quarterly .pdf format. I’m not sure yet when my tale will be published.

This story is part of the series that will be included in the “Black Dragon, White Dragon” anthology from Ricasso Press. Otrossius is an overbearing demigod, accompanied by the long-suffering and murderous scribe, Lacius. The stories feature plenty of mayhem and some dark laughs.

More details when I get them.

– Steve

I recently read “Powers,” the newest novel from Ursula K. Le Guin.

This is the third installment of her “Annals of the Western Shore,” and was published in September. I have not read the other two books in the series, “Gifts” and “Voices,” but I sure as heck will be reading them soon.

“Powers” really demonstrates Le Guin’s mastery of character and setting.

“Powers” is a fantasy novel, and in one sense reminiscent of the Earthsea books. But I think the Western Shore might be an even more fully realized setting than Earthsea, and this one has a more realistic vibe.

The Western Shore books are linked by theme and geography, but each stands on its own — so don’t think of them as “part one” and “part two,” etc. Just snag them when you find them.

If you haven’t read Le Guin in a while, don’t you think it’s about time?

– Steve

This just in from editor Frank Byrns at A Thousand Faces: The Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction:

Issue #3 of A Thousand Faces, the Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction, goes live at the end of January, featuring the following fiction:

• “The Bigger They Are,” Steve Goble
• “Gone Shooting,” Andrew Salmon
• “Night Gambit”, Scott Harper
• “Everyone Likes to Feel Useful,” Andrew Salomon
• “Off the Record,” Brian Dixon
• “The Spearhead of Invasion,” Van Allen Plexico
• “Fear,” James Mascia
• “Making Time,” Daniel Robichaud & Robert Glencer
• “The World’s Greatest Olympian,” Ricky Cruz

“A Thousand Faces” isn’t all giant Fantastic Four-style super battles (although my story has some of that vibe, for sure, because, you know, action is what I do). The ezine welcomes eclectic approaches to the whole superhuman thing, so I’m looking forward to seeing these other stories.

The issue is due at the end of the month.

Other happenings in the world of small-press adventures:

• We’re gathering subs almost daily for our Carnivah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords.” You’ve got until Jan. 15 to get yours in.
• My brief stint as an associate editor/behind-the-scenes guy at Flashing Swords ezine is over. The managing editor has lots of plans and ideas and directions she wants to go, and a labor-intensive way of doing things, so I had to bow out.
• Black Gate’s editors say they are nearing the end of that legendary slush pile — as in only a dozen or so stories awaiting responses. No word on when they’ll reopen for submissions.
• Dream Thief by Gere McClellan continues to kick the keisters of my two fantasy stories — The First Casualty from Electric Spec and The Fourth Knight’s Quest from Staffs & Starships — in the annual Preditors & Editors poll. Of course, 127 Fears by SC Bryce is cleaning both our clocks, polling at No. 3 last time I checked. Other names familiar to Swords Against Boredom readers are in the poll, too. You have until Jan. 15 to vote.
• Guess that’s all. Ain’t that enough?

– Steve