Read more on The Guardian books website.

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So. I’m trying to get an Advance Reading Copy of A Dance With Dragons, because everyone is excited about it and Vandermeer has one and I feel left out. So far, no luck, although I’m told I’m on the list as soon as any arrive in the UK. Which is cool.

So why are so many people so excited about A Dance With Dragons? BECAUSE GEORGE R R MARTIN IS A MASTER OF PULP…that’s why. Yes, having your own HBO mini-series helps. But that would never have happened if the books weren’t hot shit in the first place. Which they are. And it also helps that GRRM is writing in to a pulp field with almost no competition at the moment.

Let’s place GRRM in context. First, he isn’t Tolkien. Lord of the Rings exists on a whole other level, a work of modern mythopoeia so important that Tolkien had to invent the term himself. Our modern age needs myths, and Tolkien’s is one of the few truly great ones. Neither is A Song of Ice and Fire (I wonder how long before the rename the whole saga A Game of Thrones?) in any way a great work of literature. His books have been called Shakespearean. Beyond the fact that lots of people die, they aren’t. GRRM isn’t even attempting to dissect human behaviour as Shakespeare did. And that is a good thing.

Because what GRRM is doing is producing absolutely masterful pulp fiction. Stories where every character leaps fully formed from the page in all their archetypal glory. Where the plot careens forward through murder, revenge, war, incest, more murder, more revenge and on and on and on without apparent end. And it’s GREAT. Pulp fiction, done well, is an absolute joy. MORE I say MORE, MORE, MORE.

George R R Martin is a master of pulp fiction, a mastery achieved over decades as a Hugo award winning SF novelist then a jobbing Hollywood screenwriter. And that mastery shows when you compare GRRM’s writing to almost any other writer attempting to make pulp fiction within the SF & Fantasy genres. Publishers are flooding the market with pulp fiction across every sub-genre of fantastic literature, but there are very few, if any, writers who can match GRRM. And most fall far, far short of the mark. Wooden characters, incompetent plots, plodding and overwritten prose. Not only are most of the authors too inexperienced to have any mastery of the tools of pulp fiction, they’re being corralled into churning out a book a year or even more. The results are an undending flood of mediocre or worse fiction that fails even at its pulp aspirations.

So come on publishers. Can we value our pulp fiction more please? Give authors time to master the tools on small projects before throwing them in to multi-volume sagas, and wait the time it takes even GRRM to produce a great work of pulp fiction.

Related articles

• The Hobbit, Pulp Fiction Style (outsidethebeltway.com)
• GRRM Interview Part 4: Personal History (tunedin.blogs.time.com)
• Ten Game of Thrones Thoughts (professorbainbridge.com)

There is a lot to like about the Gemmell’s. I loved David Gemmell’s novels as a teenager and was sad when he passed away. I can really enjoy a rollicking good heroic fantasy, mark my consistent praise of George R R Martin as evidence. And any award that harnesses popular opinion and gets 10,000 votes for its shortlist deserves mighty praise.

But all that considered the Gemmell’s have managed to score a mighty home goal when it comes to their aim of getting non-genre readers to take genre seriously. From the Guardian article:

“Genre fantasy is often dismissed as being simply gung-ho or macho, as people outside genre circles tend to imagine it’s all about epic battles, weapons and warriors – in fact, it is all of those things and so much more. Contemporary fantasy fiction is about far more than escape to other realities. Freed of the constraints and preconceptions of other kinds of fiction, it holds up a mirror to reflect on this world and time through the prism of vivid characters and enthralling drama that engage the imagination like no other genre.”

I would be the first to agree that there are many examples of contemporary fantasy that hold up a mirror to our world. Unfortunately the Gemmell shortlist are not among them. Thats not a condemnation of the books. They are good, exciting ‘F’antasy of the epic and heroic kind. I like Joe Abercrombie’s series particularly for its slightly knowing attitude to its subject matter and sense of humour. But these are not books of great reflection on the world as it is. And they are definitely not books to win over non-genre readers to the cause, as they will tend to confirm rather than dispell most of the prejudcies those readers hold.

The truth is that really great epic Fantasy, that creates an immersive secondary world and fills it with compelling characters and complex stories is VERY difficult to do well, and all to easy to do poorly. The great names of the genre like Tolkien, Gemmell and Martin each in their own way mastered the many tools that great fantasy writing requires. Unfortunately, the somewhat cynical way that publishers churn out epic Fantasy sagas means that much of the writing in the genre today falls very far short of mastery. Too many of these novels lack the great leaps of imagination that Tolkien achieved when he created Middle Earth. And where the imagination is present, the author lacks the years of experience George R R Martin accrued before turning his hand to fantasy. Certainly the ‘chuck it at the wall and see what sticks’ attitude of the publishers will turn up the occasional gem, but most readers will quite rightly not bother looking for them in the mess.

I will carry on searching for my next Fantasy fix, and if it holds up a mirror to the world all the better. But until the publishers of Fantasy take their books more seriously, its unlikely a broader readership will.

Elsewhere..

Jetse de Vries gives some statistical feedback on the first hundred or so SHINE anthology stories. With this in mind it might be time to take a shot at writing a story for him…hmm…

Jean Hannah Edelstein over at the Guardian asks if there is any longer an appetitie for 1000 page books. If the next George R R Martin is a thousand pages then yes.

I will come back to ‘Spook Country’ when time allows. I am so busy with work, new freelance projects and my own writing at the moment that my reading has fallen behind, at least of books.

I have however found a new taste for short fiction in recent months. This began with a spate of excellent stories read in online magazines including Serendipity, Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld among others. I really believe e-publishing has come into its own in the last few years. E-books may still be emerging but for short fiction online outlets are now as strong if not stronger than their cousins in print. I’ve also been thrown into new realms of reading through The Fix. Their reviews are so good they have lead me to take out subscriptions for at least one more publication in addition to the four I already get.

Another revelation in the last few weeks have been audiobook’s. Realising I had less and less ‘quality time’ for full novels I decided to try out audiobooks as a way of squeezing reading into times and places it might not otherwise fit. I’ve become instantly converted, and currently have stories by Garth Nix, George R R Martin and Ursula K LeGuin loaded on to my Ipod. I think audio will become an increasingly vibrant area iver the next few years as its so well adapted for the internet and peoples bust, commuting lifestyles.

I am determined to get bakc to reading entire books though. I have a wonderful holiday to Egypt booked December, so between excursions to The Valley of the Kings I intend to get in some good quality reading time. The only problem is what to take with me. How about you well read lot help me out with some suggestions?