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The problem with nerd fiction
No one dismisses science fiction because of some goon project. It's filled with terrible writing--and those are the "greats". Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein--awful writers. They can't tell a story, can't write character, can't manage proportion, are stylistically rigid, and for them sci-fi is a nerdy affectation, like the zillion awful pulp writers who thought they were Chandler or Hammett but in reality were moonlighting insurance adjustors. For this class of sci-fi writer, a story about two young friends is completely uninteresting unless one of the friends is an alien from planet Xooptor. You might as well call it what it is, science fetish.
Then you have the backstorians, people like Frank Herbert and Tolkien whose main interest in writing seems to be developing a gigantic backstory and sticking in a few cardboard characters that stand in for humanity. There are some pat moral observations here and there, but they are shallow observations that could occur to any 13 year old, and they do not make stomping through the ten foot snowdrifts of exposition any more pleasurable.
Then you have writers like Harlan Ellison who do sci-fi because they are angry pricks, and nerds are the only people who will put up with them. The whole Star Trek/Twilight Zone/Hitchhikers hack brigade. Maybe what makes them bitter is that none of their audience reads anything but worthless genre fiction, therefore all the praise in the world won't relieve the indignity of having to address their fans at Comicon or some other supernerd ceremony. But I guess nowadays these writers are being supplanted by actual lifelong comic book geeks, your Joss Whedons.
I wouldn't begrudge you appreciating Heinlein in the spirit of Friday the 13th--a basically dopey diversion that you enjoy partly for its clumsiness or out of nostalgia--that would put all these sci-fi giants in the same category of writer as someone like Stephen King. But then some people don't get the clumsiness and talk about workmanlike genre writing (with flaws that you see in no other genre) as if they have just encountered Hamlet. They talk and talk about it when there is nothing to say.
In your post you wax about Tolkien's enormous backstory as if this is a quality of good writing, but as someone else here said (mlad, actually) an enormous backstory by design crowds out character and ideas. The more backstory you have the more the central characters become pawns of the writer, constrained by what the backstory is intended to produce--among other problems, such as lack of verisimilitude, ponderous exposition, and the fact that reality is usually stranger and more subtle than invention.
And in fantasy and sci-fi, this kind of world creation develops a very inbred character. You can trace the lineage from the early attempts to convey folk myths by way of romances, the Romanticized medievalism of gothics, the late 19th century embrace of nature and whimsy, and then the hardening (petrifying) into modern forms--I think by the time you have a Tolkien, you have dead genre-writing which is only of interest to hardcore fans. Dwarves, elves, and that kind of thing are taken as a given, and the point of racial types is completely forgotten. The use of these fantasy races is a kind of flight from good writing from the start, but after the second or third generation it becomes totally mindless. It is done simply because that is what derivative writers have read all their lives (and they mostly haven't read the early fantasy that Tolkienesque fantasy was built on).
And that's how you get utter shit like A Game of Thrones. It's a case study in bad genre writing--and immensely popular with the genre audience. Its inbred character is apparent from the very first words of the prologue--the writer can't wait to tell you how little you know about his world. PULL UP A CHAIR, M'LAD, AND GET READY FOR A FEAST OF BACKSTORY!
Comments
Why do you keep doing this, Myrmidon?
Today's the one day he can say anything and we won't take him seriously.
Why do geeks have such bad taste?… I guess this is a pointless question, but I entertain it anyway: Why do geeks exhibit such relentlessly bad taste in everything? From liking Star Trek shows to jacking off to anime porn, the geek phenotype is reliably driven towards the awful, the retarded, the stupefyingly drivellous. The geek aesthetic appears to be an aesthetic without bottom, an anti-style. A hostility to beauty, poetry, elegance, etc.
I should establish some definitions, i.e. the social taxonomy that harbors geeks. It would be incorrect to class all people as geeks merely because they share certain interests or occupations (with the exception Star Trek fans). For example it is possible to be proficient in a technical field, say computer programming, without being a geek. It is possible, though unlikely. The tip-off of the geek is not the proficiency, but the mental imbalance that the proficiency feeds from. In a world without computers, the programming geek would not rise within another vocation, he would instead settle to the bottom of the sediment as a file clerk or other drone whose primary requirement is the ability to tolerate mind-numbingly unvarying activity. His proficiency is like that of the idiot savant or autistic genius, albeit less impressive, and can only be channeled along one path.
The mental imbalance I refer to is most readily seen in the geek's masturbatory obsessions. Having no sense of perspective and lacking a personality, the geek attempts to kill two birds with one stone and form a personality around fanatical involvement in an arbitrary pastime. This pastime could involve watching Japanese cartoons, reading fantasy novels, playing video games, or literally just masturbating a lot. The pastime itself is not so significant and has only two universal attributes: that it not require physical prowess of any kind, and that it be impossible to distinguish between enjoying the pastime and not enjoying it.
For example, when the geek talks about his pastime he will almost never be able to list the things about it that he likes or dislikes. What he will do instead is describe the pastime's details. The things he claims to like are not the product of subjective awareness but simply the observable characteristics of the pastime.*
Take literature. It is possible to enjoy a work of genre fiction, but the hallmark of the geek is to enjoy only works of genre fiction. Especially when the genre involves elves and fairies and muscular lizardmen with laser guns. One could probably go on at length about what makes fantasy and science fiction inferior genres, but to save time their main weakness is that they require no knowledge of any real subject in order to pull off. No homework, in other words, that would involve broadening the reader's horizon. Although fantasy novels, for example, often take place in a medieval-like setting, it is a completely made up, ignorant, preposterous medieval-like setting, with no historical analog and very little internal consistency. You can read fantasy novels safe in the knowledge that they will not enlarge your tightly constrained outlook.**
Where the geek becomes truly disturbing is in matters of visual aesthetics. His personal appearance, of course, is often weird, repellent, unnerving. When allowed to dress himself the results betray a lack of understanding of his own appearance. Is he fat, bald, dough-faced? You can bet that these qualities will be horrifically exaggerated by his choices in grooming and apparel.
His preferred decor is that of cheap crap – plastic computer cases in the shape of dragon heads, garish poster illustrations of fantasy settings, mismatched discount furniture, etc. It has the same make-do tackiness that is imposed on teenagers still living at home or people earning the minimum wage. But the geek never gives it up; if he makes a comfortable living, he just buys a nicer place in the suburbs and crams all his cheap crap into it.
Worst of all, the geek, despite cutting such a shabby figure, is very self-impressed. He is the first to denigrate other professions, which he assumes require the same slack application and shallow talents as his own does, and the first to denigrate others within his own profession, especially if they threaten his tenuous social standing within the troop of baboons. Offshoring fears are particularly out of control among geeks, perhaps because geeks are dimly aware of how little effort is required to duplicate their output. Xenophobia also plays a role: as the geek rarely ventures outside his home or the homes of his small cluster of friends, or in some cases outside the imaginary fantasy world that buffers the geek from reality, it is a given that he will know next to nothing about India, China, or any other country that fosters the threat of international geek competition. Nevertheless despite his latent racism the geek will be the first to brag about his own sense of tolerance and fair play.
I believe this sets forth an accurate picture of geeks, but some questions remain. How do they mate? Is the geek the product of genetic mutation or inherited defect? Politically, is there any viable solution to the geek? I do not seriously entertain the idea of a geek Holocaust – it's far too early for that expensive and complicated measure. But if geeks were provided with free blow-up dolls in the shape of young Japanese schoolgirls or anthropomorphic squirrels, would they then lose interest in procreation?
Of course this assumes that geek traits come about through a quirk of natural selection. It's just as likely that radioactive meteorite, some form of undetected childhood illness, or the drinking of ditch water by pregnant women have played a role.
Whatever the case, we can all agree that the geek is an unpleasant and, more important, an unsightly blight on contemporary society
* Of course some people just aren't very articulate. If you ask a football spectator what he likes about the sport, he may well respond with, "I like watching people catch the ball and run around each other," or something equally doltish, and this is very similar to the quality of response a geek will give. When pressed for more they can go no further than describing their pastimes; they do not, in other words, even know why they enjoy them.
But there is one crucial difference even here between an unknowing boob and a geek. The boob will be capable of discrimination, the geek utterly and hopelessly incapable. The football spectator from my example will enjoy watching particular teams play, and perhaps follow the league to a lesser degree. The geek would follow the entire league, the farm teams, stadium football, college football, fantasy football, and leagues and teams he makes up on his own. He would subscribe to several football periodicals and have a library of videotaped games. Except of course the geek would not do this with football, he would do this with the literary oeuvre of J.R.R. Tolkien.
** There are exceptions. Tolkien drew a moderate amount from actual scholarship, or at least fantasy scholarship, but made up for it by inventing languages and back stories and imaginary cultures that require a lifetime of study in order to fully appreciate, thus feeding into the geek's zero-perspective fascination. (Note that the geek is willing to do limited homework as long as it has no practical value.) Tolkien is evidence that when genre writers rise to the level of adequate storytelling, they tend to create an army of geek followers.
where is this? I want to go peer at the trainwreck directly.
Okay, no way in fuck did you write that in 15 minutes. Where are you getting this.
http://www.udolpho.com/weblog/?id=00596
What are you talking about? These are my TRUE and HONEST opinions about nerds and their fiction.
You're not even trying anymore are you?
Yeah, April Fools, Myrm. We get it.
I honestly believe that world-building is the greatest type of storytelling. Sure, you can just go the lazy way out and do a carbon-copy of the psuedo-Tolkien shit you see almost everywhere, but there are some instances where you are able to see a world so elaborate and so expansive that it feels like you're actually in it.
Hell, sometimes you'll find this sort of thing in the most unlikely of places. The most intricate and creative world I've ever seen in a work of fiction before is actually from a fetish-based softcore porn comic. (Though it helps that the world is largely a collaborative effort.)
I find it very amusing (Not really) how every time this happens, I can exactly predict who's gonna post and who's gonna say what.
-shudder-
Were I a less content man right now, you'd feel my wrath in the form of longass essays
but i have arepas, coffee and my good old friend headache has left the building, so, Imma let it sliiiiide and chiiiiiiiill, mon
^^, ^Being overly judgmental of other people based on their tastes in media is fun! You like X? You must be an utter waste of human life, then!
And now we get to the excessively hyperbolic posts that ruin any chance of actually discussing something, weee.
Gotta love that part, eh?
Either way, my problem with what you said is hardly that you like world building. Trust me on that, mon, if that is your thing, I ain't gonna be the one to put it against ya. The problem is more the claim you made.
While I love worldbuilding, calling it the best form of storytelling strikes me as similar to referring to a specific type of brick as the best house ever.
Yup, my problem with your post wasn't that you like world building, but rather that you claimed it is the greatest type of storytelling, rather than recognizing that the setting is just one part of a story.
I guess the problem with nerd fiction is how poorly understood it is, even amongst nerds.
Also, it's become more and more clear to me that one of the biggest issues with nerd "culture" (as if there were only one) is its obsession with oneupmanship. Even many articles that criticise media alone implicitly criticise the consumers of said media. It's a whole bunch of "I know something you don't know" where the "knowledge" in question is just an opinion.
I'm not saying that world-building alone is what makes a story good, if that's what you took from my statement.
I do however, firmly believe that a good story needs context, and that establishing more content through backstory and world-building will almost always strengthen a well-told story. This will only work if the story is good to begin with, of course, and the world-building content should preferably be left in the supplemental content (or "All There in the Manual" as TV Tropes would put it.)
I should have thought my statement out a bit more to make it clearer, sorry.
Claiming that world building is superior to other forms of storytelling is just like saying that a big, monumental building automatically has more architectural merit than a smaller, simpler one. Worldbuilding does take more time and effort, but artistic merit is a completely different dimension of quality.
^^Ah, well that I can agree with. Good worldbuilding is certainly a way to improve a story.
While we're going with analogies, calling world-building the best kind of storytelling is like saying that a castle is the best kind of house.
Which is true.
Carry on.
I'm not sure how you expected us to draw anything else.
i am honestly getting really sick of having this debate, this makes the third time in a week.
A good story needs nothing more than to invoke emotions within the reader.
There are hundreds, thousands, of very very good stories that don't even bother world building because they're set in our world. The first example I can think of offhand is Hannibal Lecter. This story is often recognized as brilliant because of its' story and characters, not because of the world it built up around them. Or, hell, take comic books, which are for the most part set in a world very similar to our own. These stories are not built around world-building, but around the strength of the characters and the narrative.
In fact, a better example; Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Yes, entire other worlds are built up around them, but they are rarely explored in anything approaching detail. The story is arguably better for this, because it means that the reader can draw their own conclusions about what's happening in the world.
I guess there is some merit to making the setting the main character, but stories are so diverse that I wouldn't pin any one style as "the best".
wait what
Something along the lines of Victor Hugo saying that the cathedral is the main character of Notre-Dame de Paris.
That's more of a metonymy on Hugo's part. The cathedral isn't truly the main character, but simply a device that bridges the characters together and helps the plot unfold. It's simply effective use of a setting, not making the setting the main character.
Ah. In that case, yeah, that's what I mean.
These sorts of stories don't really need world-building because they presumably set in our own history.
They still do need context, however, in order to work, it's just that this context is taken from what we know of human history, making it more accessible.
A story set in 16th-century France, for example, will be a lot more confusing if you don't have any general knowledge of that time period in that particular place.
Many great pieces of literature have very vague settings and start in media res, with the reader having to learn everything along the way and use his own intuition to fill the gaps. Most existentialist novels are like that.