FMK #26: This Is Flat-Out Fanfic

[melannen]

#26! The projected halfway point of a year's worth of reading the backlog! And in fact I went in over the last couple weeks and sorted all of the remaining into piles, so I didn't end up stuck with just a bunch of boring mismatched ones toward the end, and it looks like it might actually come out to exactly 52 weeks without me having to try too hard?

It looks like there will be more non-spec-fic weeks coming up, though, I ended up with 8 more weeks worth of that. I know fewer of you get excited about those but that's what I have on my shelves. There's also four more anthology weeks.

This week's anthologies also did not garner a huge number of votes. I will reiterate you don't have to know anything about the books to vote! A lot of these I bought just 'cause I liked the title so you do not have to feel bad if you vote that way. I suspect last week's voting was on that basis, given that it was a dead heat between Carmen Miranda's ghost is haunting space station three and Brave New Girls: Girls and Gadgets. Brave New Girls won F in the end! Cats In Space won K. Surely... surely ya'll don't have something about Cats in Space? I read all the Catfantastics back in the day; I will have to at least check that one to see how much overlap there is.

I finally finished Locke Lamora, so I have three reviews to get through; IDK if I'll do that first, or a proper yuletide letter...

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

For the midway point, we have a very special theme this week: PEOPLE GETTING PAID PRO RATES FOR FANFIC! Hoorah!

Poll #18919 FMK #26: Fanfic

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

View Respondents

Slan Hunter by Kevin J. Anderson (and Van Vogt) (1995)

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F
5 (20.8%)

M
1 (4.2%)

K
18 (75.0%)

The Enchanter Reborn by L Sprague de Camp (1996)

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F
12 (52.2%)

M
5 (21.7%)

K
6 (26.1%)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (1997)

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F
24 (64.9%)

M
6 (16.2%)

K
7 (18.9%)

Flashman: from the Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser (1969)

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F
12 (42.9%)

M
7 (25.0%)

K
9 (32.1%)

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

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F
18 (41.9%)

M
3 (7.0%)

K
22 (51.2%)

Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (1956)

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F
20 (57.1%)

M
9 (25.7%)

K
6 (17.1%)

Wicked by Gregory Maguire (1996)

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F
21 (46.7%)

M
6 (13.3%)

K
18 (40.0%)

The Girl With The Golden Bouffant: A Jane Bond Parody by Mabel Maney (2004)

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F
13 (56.5%)

M
5 (21.7%)

K
5 (21.7%)

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett by Colleen McCullough (2008)

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F
15 (57.7%)

M
5 (19.2%)

K
6 (23.1%)

There And Back Again by Pat Murphy (1999)

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F
14 (53.8%)

M
8 (30.8%)

K
4 (15.4%)

Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven (1999)

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F
8 (33.3%)

M
2 (8.3%)

K
14 (58.3%)

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (2011)

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F
18 (56.2%)

M
2 (6.2%)

K
12 (37.5%)

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888)

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F
16 (64.0%)

M
7 (28.0%)

K
2 (8.0%)

Pride & Promiscuity edited by Arielle Eckstut (2001)

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F
15 (60.0%)

M
4 (16.0%)

K
6 (24.0%)

Foundation's Friends edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1989)

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F
10 (47.6%)

M
2 (9.5%)

K
9 (42.9%)

Weird Tales from Shakespeare edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1989)

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F
20 (74.1%)

M
3 (11.1%)

K
4 (14.8%)

The Day The Magic Stopped edited by Christopher Stasheff (1995)

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F
8 (42.1%)

M
2 (10.5%)

K
9 (47.4%)

Fantastic Alice edited by Magaret Weis (1995)

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F
14 (58.3%)

M
4 (16.7%)

K
6 (25.0%)

Comments

[sholio]

I loathed Fuzzy Nation, although in a conflicted way, because I completely agree that the issues he's addressing in the original book (fond of it as I am) are valid issues. It is kind of amazing, though, that he managed to take one of the best things about the original -- its optimism and the general likability of the characters; even the main antagonist is a decent enough guy that he got a redemption arc in the sequel -- and completely did away with that. Fuzzy Nation has a cast composed entirely of unpleasant assholes, including the aliens. (Especially the aliens!)

[melannen]

Ugh, that sounds like it really did kill everything good about the book. :/

I like, in principle, that people are still randomly continuing to publish Fuzzy fanfic, but I suspect I won't like that particular one.

[kore]

YEAH, I got introduced to H Beam Piper's work long before it was back in print, and I think Scalzi was one of the very worst choices to "continue" it. It does have giant issues like most of his work, I agree.

(I didn't like Redshirts much either FWIW for our hostess)

[lannamichaels]

My eternal grudge against KJA leads me to say killllll, even though I don't know what fandom he's writing fic for for that one, I just have issues from star wars and dune.

Kill the magicians.

I'm a bit meh on the red tent. It wasn't horribly bad? It was vaguely memorable? idk. I also just typed "the rent tent" instead and I feel like I would actually read that fic if it was Rent the musical.

[melannen]

The KJA one is a "posthumous collaboration" with the original author of Slan. The writing is probably terrible, but then nobody ever read Van Vogt for polished prose either.

I think the Jedi Academy Trilogy may be the first time I ever read novels that I was consciously aware were really badly written. Important milestone! (I still like the Young Jedi Knights books, though! His wife must have done most of the writing on them.)

I honestly was not expecting this much ire against The Magicians! I remember DW having a vaguely positive response to it when it came out (which is probably why I ended up owning the thing.)

"Not horribly bad" is, let's face it, a pretty high hurdle for published Bible fic.

[beatrice_otter]

AMEN HALLELUJAH SING IT.

Ahem.

Kevin J. Anderson('s books) can go diaf.

[kore]

Going with the ones I've read/friends have read:

K - The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (1997)
Long ago a friend of mine read this and went on such a vivid diatribe about how horrible it was I've never been able to pick it up.

F - The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)
Hoo boy. Most everyone I know hates this, actually with pretty good reason. The author basically set out to deconstruct Harry Potter (when JKR already....did that....but okay) and it's all about how much your life would suck if the golden time was high school. IDK. However, there are two really great female characters, Alice and Julia. I love them and have written fic about them. I loath most everything else about the books though. Maybe try it and see if you can get over wanting to drown the hero in a bucket.

M - Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (1956)
I love this book. It's a pretty idiosyncratic retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.

K - Wicked by Gregory Maguire (1996)
I couldn't finish more than ten pages of this. I found it terrible.

K - Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (2011)
I couldn't read much of this either because I read the original way back when and my brain kept chanting "IT'S ALL WRONG" and it was hard to make out the words over the din. I wonder what the reaction of someone who'd never read Piper's work might be.

F - Fantastic Alice edited by Magaret Weis (1995)
I have this and think it's pretty good? I don't remember much about it, though.

[melannen]

OK, so the consensus seems to be I need to look for an alice-and-julia only abridgement of The Magicians...

[petra]

I love the Oz books. Plural. Because there's a whole universe there, not just one damn book. Gregory Maguire took a look at the depth of Oz canon, decided he didn't care, and wrote pretentious faux-literary twaddle. The musical of Wicked is a different thing and I can almost tolerate it; the book is crap.

The Magicians is not even close to HP deconstruction, it's Narnia deconstruction, and its POV characters are horrible people. If you like spending time with horrible people and you want a perverse Narnia deconstruction, maybe give it a try, but again, the TV series is almost tolerable and the book is crap.

[melannen]

Yeah, it seems like so much of published fanfic by dudes is "I am going to ignore most of canon and all the other people who have done this and write my version, which will be DEEP and PHIloSOPHICAL unlike all those others, which I have probably not even looked at." sigh.

[kore]

He does talk about rewriting Harry Potter, and deconstructing it in one interview I of course can't find right now. This one has some HP references in it http://observer.com/2016/02/lev-grossman-the-magicians-author-talks-syfy-depression-and-magic/ Brakebills is the US Hogwarts.

[lady_ganesh]

I bounced out of Wicked so damn fast.

[marginaliana]

I used to have Fantastic Alice and I vaguely remember enjoying it, but that's about all I remember, so take that as you will.

Voted K on Flashman: from the Flashman Papers purely because it wasn't called Flashman: from the Flashman Papers 2, the Flashy and the Flashier or something that would make the repetition of 'flashman' hilarious instead of just clunky.

[melannen]

It looks like The Flashman Papers is usually treated at the series name, IDK why my version thinks it's a subtitle,

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Fraser would totally have gone with Flashman 5: The Flash and The Furious if it had been a thing when he was writing. :P

[rushthatspeaks]

This one time at a convention, I was on a panel with Lev Grossman, and the panel was about influence and how one identifies one's own influences and so on. Lev Grossman, when he introduced himself, gave this big speech about how artists are INFLUENCED in a FREUDIAN MODEL and so the FIRST THING YOU HAVE TO DO when you become aware of which authors have influenced you is KILL YOUR FATHER and if you do not do this you will NEVER BE PSYCHICALLY WHOLE (all-caps in the original). Oh, and he cited Harold Bloom. And then said that Harold Bloom's work was so good that he, Lev Grossman, just HATES HIM, ah ha ha, just joking, only not, seriously, he hates that guy, really.

And one of the other panelists was and is a dear friend-- in fact she is my adopted mother and my child's grandmother-- and we were sitting there going uh there is a long history of intentional non-authoritarian generally female kinship-style networks of writerly influence, as my friend is of a writerly generation who have been known to refer to themselves as Judith Merril's daughters, or Leigh Brackett's daughters, or Kate Wilhelm's. And we could see the words bouncing off his head.

Also, after about forty-five minutes of us trying to deflect the panel away from his continual repetition of MURDER YOUR IDOLS, he had gone on and on and on and ON about his father-figures and had literally not said one word about his mother-figures, which when it comes from somebody with an explicitly Freudian theory-base is, in my opinion, actively pretty darn creepy.

This is why I have never read one single thing by Lev Grossman, and I mention the experience here because it is my firm opinion based on it that nobody needs to.

[brownbetty]

Amazing. Thank you for sharing this story.

[sheliak]

That sounds like an excellent reason not to read anything by Lev Grossman!

[kore]

Lev Grossman, when he introduced himself, gave this big speech about how artists are INFLUENCED in a FREUDIAN MODEL and so the FIRST THING YOU HAVE TO DO when you become aware of which authors have influenced you is KILL YOUR FATHER and if you do not do this you will NEVER BE PSYCHICALLY WHOLE (all-caps in the original). Oh, and he cited Harold Bloom. And then said that Harold Bloom's work was so good that he, Lev Grossman, just HATES HIM, ah ha ha, just joking, only not, seriously, he hates that guy, really.

//facedesk Wwwwwwow.

[extrapenguin]

Voted based on title. :P Well, apart from Fuzzy Nation – that one I've actually read. It was enjoyable, though it's been a few years. Note that I haven't read the original by Piper.

[oracne]

PRIDE AND PROMISCUITY is HILARIOUS. Totally fuck it. Or marry it.

[ellen_fremedon]

Weird Tales from Shakespeare is an extremely mixed bag, like most anthologies of that sort, but Esther Friesner's screwball comedy is delightful.

[seekingferret]

I have a copy of Slan Hunter that's sat on my shelf for years... I'm terrified to touch it.

The Magicians, as you can see, is very polarizing. My personal feeling is that I love the Harry Potter parts and hate the Narnia parts so much that when I wrote Yuletide fic for the series, my canon review only consisted of rereading the Harry Potter parts.

[melannen]

Me too! Slan was probably a book that didn't need a posthumous sequel, and yet, here we are with our copies...

I tend to dislike all published Narnia deconstructions even more than I dislike Narnia, so that sounds fun.

[qem_chibati]

Other people have said this already but the book for Wicked is not very good, I read it and was left with an "eh" impression, "it's not very good" is my mothers impression and my sisters who adore the musical hate the book with a passion.

I remember really, really enjoying Rainbow Mars, especially the wolf sub-story; but the problem is I'm pretty sure I read it back in 2000, and Larry Niven is not someone I've found as enjoyable at this stage of my life.

I also remember enjoying The Day The Magic Stopped or at least some of the sub stories in it.

Fantastic Alice - if you really like the Cheshire Cat then it's probably worth it, if you don't then /shrug emoji.

[sheliak]

I know I read The Red Tent; I can remember part of the plot and even some lines, but the closest thing to an opinion I can scrape up is a vague sense of depression. I don't know if this is something I can hold against the book, or just the result of reading it rather too young (I think I must have been about ten or twelve).

I voted F on Til We Have Faces because I'd been vaguely intending to read it and never getting around to doing so for a few years.

K for Wicked. I admit that I have not read it; based on osmosis I do know that its Glinda is taken entirely from the movie, and I'm too fond of who she is in the books to touch it.

I've also never read The Magicians; the reviews I read all made it sound too unpleasant to bother.

For the rest, I judged by title, author, or my fondness (or lack of same) for the source material.

[jain]

Dissenting opinion: Wicked didn't strike me as either pretentious or literary, though I suspect that says more about me than about the book. :P It's been a while since I read it, but I remember really enjoying the worldbuilding--particularly related to Ozian politics--and the explicitly queer supporting characters.

Heads up that the ending of the book is terrible, though. Totally pasted on, flatly written, sacrificing characterization for the needs of the plot, etc., etc. But if you're cool with reading a book in which all of the good parts are concentrated in the first ~4/5 of the story, then I definitely recommend it.

[sholio]

Yeah, I liked it too. It's been ages since I read it (late 90s, probably), so I don't know if I'd still like it, but I enjoyed it at the time. I do remember that I found the ending a little bit "wait, what??" as well, though.