Jan-ken-pon #111 11/28/08

Issue #111

November 28th, 2008

The 111th, collector’s edition issue of my column is here! Yes, it’s an issue because it’s the closest thing I’ll get to writing comics (hey, if you want to illustrate this thing – get at me!) so I’m using all the stroke that being an e-daimyo affords me. Some introduction is in order, a declaration of purpose, and though I find myself wanting to just say I will continue the tradition of the Costanza/Seinfeld doctrine but I’m not sure that conceptually I’d even have that much content.

“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” – Oscar Wilde

Jan-ken-pon will just be whatever happens to be on my mind. In terms of frequency I really puzzled over giving Jan-ken-pon a set, concrete, format so I could really commit to it, but it’s simply not in my nature. There, after all, must be speculation and with that in mind, structure and format will change, sometimes I’ll tackle one topic, sometimes several, and sometimes none at all.

So it’s just straight off the mind at the moment I’m typing. I do want to wish everybody a happy and safe holiday (and good luck on their shopping missions coming up!)

On books. . .

The first quarter of 2009 looks damn solid for fans of speculative fiction and I’m excited for it. There is always nice niche and small press material in general but there are a couple of books coming out in the mainstream-mold that I actually found really appealing, shocking myself a bit really. What are they you ask? Wait for the Klaussner-club of online extended-previewers to reword the summaries and babble about them this early out. I’ll get to them closer to the end of the year and indeed will mention some of them in my part of the BookSpot Central Best Reads of the Year coming next month. At any rate, it looks like 2009 will start off fun, continuing the way it has ended as I think there were a number of really nice reads closing out 2008.

I’m one of those people that no amount of bad Star Wars novels I read (and we are talking a library in itself) take new Star Wars books off of the top of my pile. I don’t know what it is, but damn it, I was just a kid hit in the head over the biggest thing to happen in fiction in my lifetime. Some people still suck their thumb, I still read Star Wars books and sometimes I even dig them. Sometimes, I dig them a lot. Recently I read Order 66 by Karen Traviss. What she does, the true reason why this books works, is that from the very beginning it makes you forget the preconceived, well known, ramifications that the titles implies and keeps it in the background. We know what Order 66 is, we know of the fall of the Jedi and the genius propaganda and political machinations and efficiency of Palpatine and his New Order. The book, Order 66 is not, however, an adaptation of the event we have in our mind. It is not about the epic -eradication of demigods by the order of demigods and their troops. It is not a book about the aftermath of the Order or following the galactic celebrities leading up to it. It was a real book. Traviss made a novel of the footnote in the midst of the concurrent epic – the left out material about people. . .who happen to be clones. In what was probably a move by Lucas to dehumanize the Empire (much like the use of the droid army with the Separatists), Traviss adds to her mythos of the clones and mando and makes them the human element that really don’t care about the bullet points of the war, they just want to be able to have time to duck those shots with their own and get out before they become one of those points. The questions of morality are there just due to the existence of the clones themselves and are merely heightened in that they exist in a setting with Jedi – Jedi who are their generals. Kal Skirata just becomes one of the great characters in the extended SW mythos.

Reading Karen Traviss Star Wars books makes me have that feeling akin to when I think about how interesting shows would be based on peripheral of mainstream commodities. A Gotham Central show would be awesome – and similarly I’d love to see some kind of show based on a Storm Trooper squad.

I also recently read James Luceno’s Millenium Falcon. It’s a middle of the road effort. I actually liked the narrative structure of the novel, I found it interesting for a SW novel but it almost came off as something Luceno recently saw done in another book and he wanted to apply it to SW for a test drive. It’s definitely not Cat Valente spinning Orphan Tales. I do like the idea of the novel itself – backtracking the history of the iconic ship and I think their is a sentiment a reader can appreciate in the story but the ending of the book seems to exists only because the story had to end. It’s almost as if they didn’t want to make waves or reveal too much in the universe in what was my first post-Legacy of the Force book. I tend to give Luceno 3 extra points on everything because the guy wrote Robotech novels but in the end, this book is probably not recommendable. There also is a element introduced that scares me a bit and it pertains to the ability of modern medicine to extend human life rather substantially. Now, from the outside looking in, when you view the tech level of SW you’d figure this is not news and indeed rather obvious but even Luceno let the question hang via Han and Leia and the whole time I was just like No, no, no!

Chris Barzak. . . you are just magnificent! That’s 1/10 of my best of the year revealed!

Question. . .

I often get asked if I saw what so-and-so said about this or this as it pertains to the Speculative Fiction online ‘community’. The answer in most cases is no. I fully believe that great, insightful, and fun stuff is being written in numerous places but the truth is that I‘m just too busy. It’s not even moving away from SF/F – I’m just too busy with BookSpot Central! Many people will often (with disdain) remark on the rise of online venues pertaining to the field but if we get past that for a moment, and just look at how many are marginally successful, you will see there is work that goes into it. A lot have popped up, but the difference in merely existing and being successful (whatever you define that as) can directly be pointed to some amount of work. I literally wake up and spend a few hours of my life each day swapping emails with authors, editors or publicists (after I fix Damon’s piss-poor presentation skills!). You can either be the person who visits everywhere or the person trying to construct a venue, not both for a long period of time or your brain goes into overload especially when your venues has reached a point in readership that you don’t really have to merc yourself out and spam other people’s venues that they’ve worked hard to build themselves*. Places I do visit tend to not be related. I’m a comic book fan – a collector and reader – and I find interacting with that community kind of balances the novelish world I live in when I’m online. I do visit some sites like Shaken and Stirred, the Swivett, The Groovy Age of Horror, BookSlut – sites that do something or offer something I can’t do or don’t already do. You have to imagine that for me visiting a site that does advance summaries/previews of books is boring as shit as I’ve already most likely read the material in question and in most cases feel like I have a better understanding of the text than what‘s being presented! I do listen a lot of podcasts. I’m talking I got like a couple dozen in circulation and while I’m sitting at the PC doing BookSpot/Helio stuff or working out I listen to podcasts. I do sneak on board the Westeros Boards from time to time to read new theories on ASoIaF and I used to read some threads at the Malazan site that seemed fun, but when we are talking about series like that, they are more than hobbies. They are . . .

The Epic Passion. . .

You’d be hard pressed to find a book fan that over the last few years who has supported what was at the time viewed as an alternative fantasy – a strand of fiction that sometimes claimed fantasy, SF, Horror, Noir, affiliations which were probably – if breaking down ingredients – were true but more so because they didn’t fit into what mainstream consciousness applies to any of the large headings. Damon and I not only spend the time associated with this, but we spend actual money doing this and if it is always my hope that we can continue to introduce more and more readers to the next Jeff VanderMeer, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, Rhys Hughes or Salvador Plascencia; to tell them thy missed out on early Jonathan Carroll or Lucius Shepard – to tell them to watch out for Rachel Swirsky and Chris Barzak. If our site pointed one person to any of these writers just once it’s all worth it!

That said, I’m an adult that was a boy who used to run to the library periodically to see when the next book in my epic fantasy series came out! This was pre-net, and I didn’t even have knowledge of regular (if there is such a thing) book publication schedules. So there was a lot of, “What do you mean book II of the Scions of Shannara is not out!” and more than a few “so, when exactly is Zahn’s The Last Command coming out?” I can’t explain the joy of walking into the library, peering to the left where all the new releases are sitting and not being able to see the title, yet, but seeing tomes that just could be the book I’m looking for!

The reason why I enjoy Martin and specifically A Song of Ice and Fire is that he brought the chapter back. The beauty of the single chapter is something he must have adored – he names his characters after them. How long had it been before you picked up A Games of Thrones that you read a book that’s every chapter took you through the emotions – not just the motions – that some entire books failed at delivering?

Do you remember?

My introductory experience with A Song of Ice and Fire was pre-internet and is much older in origin then when I actually finally got around to read it! Indeed, it was an epic-battle of its own; an accidental saving the best for last, though my motives were not pure. I used to get in trouble a lot in school. With very hesitation I could probably only count 3-4 minds in my class that I found comparable (one of which was a very good friend of mine) but I was an idiot in a way youth and arrogance embodies a generation X’er***. Indeed, I remember being in the gym with our entire class (a couple hundred students) being lectured and I was rolling my eyes in the corner I got called out by the teacher addressing us, “Don’t roll your eyes, you’re a big part of this!”. I was the guy that wouldn’t get the best test grade in class – it would go to the girl (I remember you, Steph!) who’d get a 98, but I would get the hateful look from here when I got the 96 and the world knew how hard she studied and how I never even brought a book to class (on those occasions I even went to class).

How does this relate? Well one of the many reasons I skipped class was to read ASOIAF. Why not just read it later after school you ask? Well, because I was a highly organized delinquent. I played ball after school and I just didn’t have time. You didn’t miss out on runs at the court!

I knew my library well, if book was missing I knew it and it’s because I used to hide out there on days I was suspended and just read. I had read everything Fantasy and a lot of SF: Shannara, Otherland, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Xanth, Dune, Word/Void, Amber, Riddlemaster, Wheel of Time, Farseer, History of Middle Earth, War of Light and Shadow, Riftwar, Coldfire, Dark Tower (and Eyes of the Dragon, baby!), Belgariad, the Dragon and the George stuff from Gordon R. Dickson, and tons more. I remember seeing A Game of Thrones and always avoided it as it looked ‘bland’ too ‘real’ the same stuff I shudder at when I hear adults like Damon talk now. I wasn’t ready for epic fantasy to grow up, I wasn’t ready to grow up****.

It wasn’t an issue of reading level. At this point I was already reading books by people like Umberto Eco and as noted before I was exposed to the ‘classic’ novels of mainstream fiction at a very young age. So I had Melville, Twain, Dickens, London, Lew Wallace etc, etc behind me and I distinctly remembering reading Memoirs of a Geisha at around the same time. I was much more liberal with my SF at the time – I was digging everything from Star Wars, to Greg Bear, to Dan Simmons, to Card, to Sharon Shinn’s Archangel stuff though I wasn’t as well-read overall in SF. True, I wasn’t reading ‘Hard’ SF at the time (and my appreciation for SF in general is something that would come later) but if I was being completely honest, minus a small numbers of excellent exceptions (I’m looking at you, Egan!) Hard SF puts me to damn sleep to this day.

It (AGoT) was really that book that I had in my mind was the last book I was going to read in the whole joint, if I just ever ran out of books! It was like an inside joke I had with myself and I can remember more than a few times where I always found something else – saved by a new release or the such – and think to myself, “yeah, not today!”. It in many ways represented my bane and my purpose in finding new books to avoid it. Later, it would come to represent the ascension of the epic form in my eyes.

Do you remember pre-net days? Wasn’t your reading even more personal? These days the net offers a wonderful opportunity for exposure to news books but with it comes a preconceived aura - it was recommended by so-and-so, it got good buzz from this blog, that journal and so on. Back then, it was just me and the shelves my discoveries were my own and in many ways what little audience I have been able to muster with what we did and do at Fantasybookspot.com, BookSpot Central, or the Bodhisattva derived from from these forays into the library. Before we could surmise that Terry Goodkind was in all likelihood a douche, before we could get together and make fun of The Gates of Dawn, before we knew when not to believe our blurbage just because they were made by our favorite authors.

We were ignorant, but I say there was magic in that bliss. Now, I’m a member of a community I’m aware of that loves several authors but there I something about those days that I truly felt like it was me and the book and that’s it. I used to do dirt – like for real – but as I think back I remember after doing whatever that day I’d always find time to lose myself in what I was reading.

The end of the story is telegraphed, obviously one day I picked it up – having ran out of everything else to read – and I sat in those all too comfy library chairs and I read the story that put the warning out: You can’t write epic fantasy any more and just to be what epic fantasy had become. It was not a tradition meant to be continued and homaged; it was a tradition to be built on, to live up to the name ‘epic’. I looked up and for the first time in hours realized I was surrounded by people, some of which I knew (don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t friends with everybody that went to school with me but we were just the perfect size school where if you didn’t know a person, you were very familiar with somebody who did – you were only 1 degree away from anyone at any time). People that didn’t know me as being a first degree ass ( I was) knew me because I was the hook-up, or because I had a decent ride, or because I’d hit the courts everyday, or knew because my circle of true friends was pretty diverse and what waters we swam in. You know, high school crap. I’m that type of reader and it’s one of those things that I at times actually hope and fear I never lose – I’m a traveling man. I completely lose myself when I read – no matter what it is. It is an oddity, as I’m also an (what I’d call) a rather aware, streetwise and observant person . I’m not nosey mind you, but I’m one of those people that gives you the Sherlock treatment the moment you walk into my presence (which comes I think from a lot of years of rather shady enterprising as a youth). These two qualities seem in conflict but in truth it’s a relationship that needs each other. When I read a book I turn everything off – my guard, my insecurities, my ego, my awareness, my jade. What I don’t turn off, however, are my standards. Luckily, Martin knows a thing or two about standards.

This is why I feel like I was there during the royal visit to Winterfell. The different perspectives offered about the King, of the members of House Lannister, the discussion between Jon and Tyrion. We meet a character that will be called the Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, Lord Commander, the Lion of Lannister.

“They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered “Kingslayer” behind his back. Jon found it hard to look away. This is what a king should look like; he thought to himself as the man passed”

So much about Jaime and Jon is said and to be said with this one early line. We find later all he (Jaime) wanted to ever be was Ser Arthur Dayne – a statement that should never have the right be as powerful as it in fact is as Dayne is not even alive during the course of the series.

As much as readers love House Stark and their honor, and the easy nature of Robert Baratheon’s youth, how much do all of us wonder if all would have been better if Rhaegar had cut the young Stag down at the Trident? How good was the word of the Targareyn Prince to Jaime before he left for battle?

It’s a book/series that has stimulated discussion for more than a decade and there are questions that I still want, that I still need the answers to. I loved epic fantasy before Martin but I do believe A Game of Thrones confirmed it was no mere prolonged childhood fancy and indeed a lasting love.

I’ve gone into Erikson before, but will have more in the future as that was a rather early post by me and the story just keeps getting grander and grander and I’m going to try to touch on it in many places – this column, an article, a review – wherever as I can. Obviously, I’m also a fan of R. Scott Bakker but I’ll kind of get to that post-Judging Eye.

Something I recently learned . . .

“After graduating from high school, Falk joined the United States Merchant Marine as a cook, before completing a Bachelor of Arts in political science at the New School for Social Research in 1951. He also attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, for three years. After having obtained a Masters degree in public administration at Syracuse University in 1953, Falk applied unsuccessfully for a job with the CIA”

And he beat cancer! Columbo was a damn beast!

Coolest thing we’ve been called recently. . .

Not going to count the hate mail we received charging us to be against self-published authors like we actively advocate putting them in internment caps or even actively makes move against them****.

No, we will skip that and go into positive things like being called the BookSpot Mafia. Which actually isn’t too far off. The lovely that gave us that name I myself have dubbed La Bella Donna Dot.

Recent quality purchase. . .

I’ve discussed my admiration for DC Greytones (here and here) and this is one of my favorite covers ever. They just don’t make them like they used to! I was able to add this one to the Tomio-vault recently and very pleased! It’s not a high dollar book, but I love me them tones!

Coolest person online of the month. . .

Communicating in with earnest about Japanese giant anteaters and book titles?

Kirsten is the illest – we can‘t wait for your next book!

The State of the Empire. . .

In early December my interview with Matthew Stover will be up. I’d say it’s the Stover interview to end all Stover interviews but that damn Gabe Chouinard got to him for SF Site and Fantastic Metropolis some years ago and frankly, just put it down. Still, pretty cool to look forward to! This will be an On the Spot interview (our longer format) and not a BookSpot Beat interview.

I have a ton more in various stages of completion but I can’t really say exactly with any certainty when any of them will be completed, so some may pop up before or after the Stover interview.

In the next two weeks or so you should see a couple of new items/features debut at BookSpot Central.

Tomio Classics – YouTube Pick

I got directed to this via comic community. I guess it won’t mean anything to anyone who is not familiar with the Batman: Knightfall storyline that occurred in the Batman titles in the 90’s but I thought it was hilarious.

Jan-ken-pon

_{* big thanks to Ran!
** called stupidity in some (many) planes.
***says the guy who still collects comics and pulps published decades before he was born
**** See my Disinterest Isn’t Antagonistic}

Read/Post Comments

_{Jan-ken-pon is the time traveling, force-walking, multiverse crossing column of Jay Tomio, owner of 1/3 of everything you see currently on screen and the editor of Heliotrope. A traditionalist, he celebrates Thanksgetting, not the upstart Thanksgiving. Some call him the Bodhisattva}

About Jay Tomio

...Jay Tomio is the co-owner of BSCreview and BSCkids. You should probably become his disciple through twitter @JayTomio. More fun awaits at Gestalt Mash, Vogue Immunity, and The Malazan Ascendancy.