Elves: size matters

Elves have a long history in folklore and fantasy novels. They have their roots in a shoe-mending tricky/mischievous/annoying/Norse mythos. Over time elves have grown considerably taller and considerably more badass. When they grow to be over four feet tall, they shuck their shoe-mending ways and around six feet, they become ethereal and perfect beings. The image of tall elves, distant and cold, is pushed most strongly by old and new success of the Lord of the Rings. But there is an upper limit of acceptability for these tall elves. If they are more than seven feet tall, you may be stepping into a weird alien race or lanky giant territory, and things go downhill quickly if they get any taller still. Imagine if the fifty foot woman claimed to be an elf? Yeah, it's kind of like that.

But there are still many elves who start stick to the short end. If they are too short, they tend to be a little silly. They can pass for tricksy or servile, but they may also confuse the reader into thinking they are very large fairies. One of the main problems is that an elf who is too short eliminates all chances of a satisfying interspecies romance with a human character.

Around five feet and you start getting some potential. If they are just a little short they are fighting from a height disadvantage, and have more to overcome. They can be more badass than tall elves, because their success in battle in a tall world displays character strength. This height may be optimal.

The Maxim of eBooks

I have thought it over and decided that eBooks are undeniably superior to real books. This is despite or perhaps because of listening to a talk yesterday: http://www.vabook.org/site11/program/details.php?eventID=153

It was a very good talk, but I remain unconvinced that books are a good thing. They take up space, they kill trees, and even if they're bad, you're reluctant to get rid of them because you bought them. Also, they are cheaper.

So we've established that

a) eBooks save space

b) eBooks do not kill trees

c) eBooks are cheaper

Too often, it is thought that eBooks are cheaper because their insubstance makes them an inferior product. But they allow you to save space and prevent you from having tree-murder guilt. Thus I assert that they are NOT an inferior product.

I went to a bookstore today and found myself staring at rows and rows of books that all looked bad. Reading a couple of back covers and such, I realized I have no use for books sitting in bookstores, getting lost on the shelves. What good is your cover of a picture of fun and excitement next to every other cover that promises fun and excitement? The only reason I would invest in one of these books was word of mouth. And how does word of mouth spread? In person, online, email, or by other insubstantial means.

Yet if someone tells me to read a book, I'll say sure, and it will be a good three months before I manage to track it down, which I may or may not remember in the first place. The library may not have it, the bookstore may be out of copies.

But eBooks - the instant gratification potential is endless. Pay a dollar for a story. What else would you be doing with a dollar? Buy 1/10th of a physical book? Buy most of a stick of gum? If you like the story as much as you would like a $10 book, the author has saved you $9. Therefore, you owe the author nine dollars. You can pay the author back with $9 of word of mouth advertising. It is only logical that you settle the score by telling nine other people how good the book was.

This is the only way eBooks can possibly work.

At a glance: A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

I just finished reading A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin. Admittedly, the book has been out for a couple of decades, so you can probably survive without my thoughts on the matter. But the book came out before the internet, so maybe the internet is not clogged with reviews? Nah, she's famous. I'm sure they're there. To avoid idea-infection, I very carefully avoided researching the question. And she is famous for good reason. This feminist pioneer sci-fi writer knows what she's about.

Le Guin continues to be a good read, even in a time so alien to her own. Of course, she mostly writes about aliens, so this is no surprise. There isn't much to date the stories except for the date of publication. The book was enjoyable, but not every story was engrossing. As a collection, it did suffer from incoherency and structure. It would have been stronger if halved. Some stories were just tossed in but were disruptive to the strongly developed verse of the others.

This book contains an introduction and eight stories. If you read the introduction, it provides a guide for what to read and what to skip, but I didn't listen. She says she wouldn't explain two of the stories because they are jokes. Unfortunately, humor must have evolved beyond recognition since the early 80's and 90's.

Another is a story that originated from a single sentence someone else wrote in a workshop. It's a damn good sentence; you can skip the story.

Three of the stories have the makings of an excellent book. They build on each other. They explore the implications of a theory in a changing and engaging way. This is a universe traditionally limited by light speed. In comes Churten theory, or transilience, and you can be somewhere in the blink of an eye. But at what cost? Gone is the deeply human process of cause and effect. Of chronology. Of sanity. It's a beautiful synthesis of story and philosophy. If the whole collection continued developing this, or even led up to it, I would strongly recommend the book. The title story is the best, FYI.

Le Guin uses a traditional narrative approach, which is perhaps necessary. A postmodern approach to transilience would be bewildering; it would necessitate a rejection of chronology in the text, heavily influenced by stream of consciousness, and could be best expressed by text printed over other text for a more proper experience of simultaneity, and perhaps only as a hypertext web.

Verse vs Verse

In varying degrees, there is a certain poetry to prose. Hemingway didn't hold with girly things like poetry and description. That's why, as well as a poor structure for dialogue, The Old Man and the Sea is so bleak. Other writers, in the Faulkner fashion, try to inject poetry into every turn of phrase. This sometimes leaves the reader lost in abstraction trying to pass as plot and character.

The amount of wordplay and poetry in the writing gives a certain feel to the text. Wordy, writerly, ornate, extravagant, flowery text must only fill a certain percent of the novel. Purple prose by any other name would overfill a tweet. If verse crowds out the plot or characters, the readers may be found lying dead, smothered on their couches, book draped over their face. A purple shroud. On the other hand, if the prose lacks poetry, you may be better off reading a newspaper to tally puns in the titles.

The words create a sense of atmosphere which is critical to the story's universe (or at least to preserve life on the planet). An honorable knight can only exist in the two dimensional space of parchment, scrawled over with epic poetry. Cthulu can only breathe in Lovecraft's dripping, overwrought, and anxious prose. No matter what world your fiction is placed in, your tone needs to match it and supplement the story. This applies especially if it is fantastical or sci-fi; you need to find a tone that will aid and abet the suspension of disbelief.

Twilight and every other supernatural romance is changing the tone for the supernatural from the unnatural to the pedestrian romance. But hey, it sparkles. There must still be some magic! A farce, but in a sense it works; the twilit tone is one of denial. Denial that vampires are a bloodthirsty lot. Denial that the relationship is inherently and utterly deranged. Please, dear supernatural romance writers, kick it up a notch. I think it is high time that this genre takes its psychopathology out into the open.

Editing is hard.

Don't let anyone else tell you different. It's really hard. You've got to walk that fine line, that razor's edge, between the writer's vision, and your own. You can see the writer's blindspots, but they can sometimes see yours.

Writers have just done something remarkable, and it is the rare writer who is fully open to having that word-baby torn apart by the jackals of judgment and style. But without that gnashing and bleeding, the book is likely to have some problems. Hopefully the writer acknowledges it can be made better, and hopefully the editor will not scar the writer's unique feel with their own personal style. It's a hard, hard balance to strike.

I am presently engaged in the process of editing a work of nonfiction. Structure may be what determines success. I may have to write or encourage the writing of an acrostic poem for greater coherence. How often can one say that?