is it fiction, or is it corporate?
9 May 2006 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouAnother round o’ reading, these all being used books printed in the mid-90s, mostly. One of the few I’ve finished is A Prince Among Men, put out in ‘95 by Warner books, written by Robert Charrette; this appears to have been his second book, his first one being a fictionalized work for the Shadowrun game/series. Okay.
It does show its age: it’s trying hard to capitalize on Gibson’s cyberpunk, with a veneer of fantasy. So there are annoying quirks that Charrette (and most others) just can’t get like Gibson -- the slang, the shorthand, the nicknames. Perscomp for “personal computer”, or blipvert for “15-second advertisement”, and no, the idea of a living room with four or more screens displaying a television show and simultaneous advertisements was done better, long ago, by Bradbury, but I could overlook that if the attempts at slang weren’t so paltry and hamhanded at the same time.
Try saying “perscomp” or “blipvert” out loud, and you’d see immediately that these are not likely shortcuts in the language. They’re too mush-mouthed, and nothing like Gibson’s lo-glow (for the neon light cast by massive logo billboards), or his twists on old words into new, like “cowboy” for hacker. Plus, if you’re going to work with slang, it needs to be meshed so tightly into the narrative that it never slacks. It must be as omnipresent as any other word neatly merged into our language. Gibson can do that; Charrette can’t, and it makes some parts awkward and contrived.
Museum security guard & college student John Reddy gets caught up in a sorceress who brings King Arthur (or a reasonable facsimile) up from sleep, while a bunch of federal agents, corporate types, and who-knows-else are trying to either hinder or help; the fairy world (the “otherworld”) is impinging on the human world and strange beasties are all over the place.
The review over at Amazon (read after I finished, sadly) does have a good point: “ this menagerie also prevents character development, and reader confusion often substitutes for suspense”, and damn if that don’t sum it up. I had little connection to any of the characters, and at times it felt like the author was being deliberately obtuse for fear I’d figure it out too soon, or something. That, and I found it irksome that Reddy is just a college student meandering through his days, with too much emphasis on setting him up only to later skip a good two months worth of potential action, I suppose in favor of keeping that early stuff that really didn’t do much.
But what got me the most, and made the story more of a parody at times than anything else, was the unremitting corporate feel. I don’t mean in the good-Gibson way, I mean as is:
“she had a Rocker™ suit...”
“he drove up in a Nissan Silhouette™...”
“he passed the Xerox™ machine...”
“the glow from the FlatScreen™...”
Puhleese, make it fricking stop.
The first instance, I thought, hey, it’s the narrative being snarky, if awkward. I mentally revised what had been something like “he ignored the ____™...” and changed it to, “he ignored the ___, trademarked in ninety-six countries, copyrighted anywhere else of course, and...” which is a snarkier tone like I’d expect from Gibson: the characters’ constant awareness that the corporate world drives, and controls, nearly every aspect of life including our language and ownership of it. But no, a few pages later... another trademark. I felt like I was reading the written version of some bad teenage movie with constant product placement.
This shouldn’t be that hard, people. Putting “look! I’m being relevant!” products in your work really, in the long term (or so it seems to me), just dates you damn fast. Within a few years we’re going to know exactly how old your work is, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna feel that fresh if you say “Chevrolet Cavalier™” because hello, OLD, too soon.
What I liked about Gibson, and picked up from him, is the technique of knowing when something is classic -- a Smith & Wesson, not likely to be outdated anytime in the next century -- and when something should be replaced: Win486, VW Rabbit, 14-4 modem. Gibson, as I recall, creates something new; it may have been a VW Rabbit in the draft but the final version is a Speed 148-VE. A modem becomes a 92X, and it’s implied this is damn fast and spiffy. A cellphone, a suit, a type of wallpaper: all get names as if they’re something special, and I don’t need the familiarity to trust the author’s words when he tells me, “look, this is something special in this world, haute couture, expensive, cheap, out-of-date, cutting-edge, because I say so.”
But if an author insists on using “real world” product names, the least he could bloody well do is cut off the fingers of any corporate editor that insists every frickin’ instance gets, without exception, a stupid TM at the end. Annoying.
It does show its age: it’s trying hard to capitalize on Gibson’s cyberpunk, with a veneer of fantasy. So there are annoying quirks that Charrette (and most others) just can’t get like Gibson -- the slang, the shorthand, the nicknames. Perscomp for “personal computer”, or blipvert for “15-second advertisement”, and no, the idea of a living room with four or more screens displaying a television show and simultaneous advertisements was done better, long ago, by Bradbury, but I could overlook that if the attempts at slang weren’t so paltry and hamhanded at the same time.
Try saying “perscomp” or “blipvert” out loud, and you’d see immediately that these are not likely shortcuts in the language. They’re too mush-mouthed, and nothing like Gibson’s lo-glow (for the neon light cast by massive logo billboards), or his twists on old words into new, like “cowboy” for hacker. Plus, if you’re going to work with slang, it needs to be meshed so tightly into the narrative that it never slacks. It must be as omnipresent as any other word neatly merged into our language. Gibson can do that; Charrette can’t, and it makes some parts awkward and contrived.
Museum security guard & college student John Reddy gets caught up in a sorceress who brings King Arthur (or a reasonable facsimile) up from sleep, while a bunch of federal agents, corporate types, and who-knows-else are trying to either hinder or help; the fairy world (the “otherworld”) is impinging on the human world and strange beasties are all over the place.
The review over at Amazon (read after I finished, sadly) does have a good point: “ this menagerie also prevents character development, and reader confusion often substitutes for suspense”, and damn if that don’t sum it up. I had little connection to any of the characters, and at times it felt like the author was being deliberately obtuse for fear I’d figure it out too soon, or something. That, and I found it irksome that Reddy is just a college student meandering through his days, with too much emphasis on setting him up only to later skip a good two months worth of potential action, I suppose in favor of keeping that early stuff that really didn’t do much.
But what got me the most, and made the story more of a parody at times than anything else, was the unremitting corporate feel. I don’t mean in the good-Gibson way, I mean as is:
“she had a Rocker™ suit...”
“he drove up in a Nissan Silhouette™...”
“he passed the Xerox™ machine...”
“the glow from the FlatScreen™...”
Puhleese, make it fricking stop.
The first instance, I thought, hey, it’s the narrative being snarky, if awkward. I mentally revised what had been something like “he ignored the ____™...” and changed it to, “he ignored the ___, trademarked in ninety-six countries, copyrighted anywhere else of course, and...” which is a snarkier tone like I’d expect from Gibson: the characters’ constant awareness that the corporate world drives, and controls, nearly every aspect of life including our language and ownership of it. But no, a few pages later... another trademark. I felt like I was reading the written version of some bad teenage movie with constant product placement.
This shouldn’t be that hard, people. Putting “look! I’m being relevant!” products in your work really, in the long term (or so it seems to me), just dates you damn fast. Within a few years we’re going to know exactly how old your work is, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna feel that fresh if you say “Chevrolet Cavalier™” because hello, OLD, too soon.
What I liked about Gibson, and picked up from him, is the technique of knowing when something is classic -- a Smith & Wesson, not likely to be outdated anytime in the next century -- and when something should be replaced: Win486, VW Rabbit, 14-4 modem. Gibson, as I recall, creates something new; it may have been a VW Rabbit in the draft but the final version is a Speed 148-VE. A modem becomes a 92X, and it’s implied this is damn fast and spiffy. A cellphone, a suit, a type of wallpaper: all get names as if they’re something special, and I don’t need the familiarity to trust the author’s words when he tells me, “look, this is something special in this world, haute couture, expensive, cheap, out-of-date, cutting-edge, because I say so.”
But if an author insists on using “real world” product names, the least he could bloody well do is cut off the fingers of any corporate editor that insists every frickin’ instance gets, without exception, a stupid TM at the end. Annoying.
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no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 06:19 pm (UTC)Of course, it's really no better than Piers Anthony. "Hey, look! Another pun! Am I the cutest fucking thing you've ever seen or what!"
no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 07:29 pm (UTC)*cries*
no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 07:32 pm (UTC)Reminds me of the creative writing camp I went to, where the instructor taught us that specifics for characterization -- cars, belongings, clothing style, and so on -- only work if the reader has the same association as the writer. Saying, "she wore silver ankhs" will not make the reader think, "fashionable and cool" if the reader has an association of "drugged-up and slutty" for "goth".
It goes further, though, in that if you think a pug is so ugly it's cute, then this works as association, but if you just say "a small dog" then it could be anything. There's a point of associative-description being useful in narrative -- a range, I suppose -- and too little, or too much, undoes the benefit.
Once again, proof that it's not the writing basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling that are so hard, but knowing what goes in, and what can be left out. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 May 2006 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 May 2006 05:50 pm (UTC)Still not entirely sure, but hardly pressed enough to go find out.
no subject
Date: 11 May 2006 12:48 pm (UTC)AND ZOMG DID YOU KNOW NAOMI NOVIK WRITES FANFIC? *dead* Just. alkdfakdfjs. I KNOW WHO SHE IS! :D
I thought I had never heard of her before you reviewed the book, but I am very familiar with her fanfiction. XD
*pokes you* See, it happens.
no subject
Date: 13 May 2006 07:16 pm (UTC)It seems to be one of those things that's an "open secret," but it's not like this is new, after all. It's just that now we have the internet, that open secret is available to a helluva lot more people than it was in the days when you had to go to the con and purchase a mimeographed copy to be able to get your mitts on someone's fanfiction.
Still, gives one hope, eh.