Tag: Steven Brust

Agyar… oh my god! Also, I’m irked at Jo Walton

On February 21, 2013

I said, oh, just a post ago, that Steven Brust is my favorite fantasy author. I come to this assessment primarily because of his 1st-person Vlad Taltos novels, and the Alexandre Dumas homage Dragaeran novels. They take place in the same world, but where the Taltos novels are a combination of Raymond Chandler and Robert Block while the so-called “Khaavren Romances” are some of the most clever and fun novels as if written in the style of Dumas. Then there’s the hard-to-get Brokedown Palace, which also sort of takes place in the same world, but takes on yet another completely different style.

But, oddly, I’ve hardly read anything else by him. His “Firefly” fanfic was pretty fun (and I hate fanfic, even by successful authors), and Freedom & Necessity, written with Emma Bull, was intriguing. So, when Nebula-winning Jo Walton wrote an article a few months ago extolling and wonder and glory of one of Brust’s older stand-alone books, Agyar, and primarily focused on the fact the there’s a huge spoiler involved that changes the entire way the book read when you know it, well, I just had to finally read it before I got spoiled, right? Amazed that all these years of being a Brust fan, I hadn’t yet been ruined.

I hadn’t read it yet, hadn’t even bought it yet (I have a couple others of his I’ve bought and hadn’t read yet) because well, it’s a vampire story and I hate vampire stories. They have been so over-done, and honestly, Anne Rice (despite the brilliant Interview With a Vampire), completely ruined me on them with her horrible later novels. I just could never bear to try to read another, especially from my favorite author. I didn’t want to have that bad taste in my brain and taint on my fandom. But, Jo Walton was so over-the-moon with it, and her spoiler-focused article made me really wonder if maybe it really even is a vampire novel (perhaps it’s about a guy who thinks he is), I was convinced.

standing alone, kind of an odd cover. But when you read the novel, you discover this is the best cover for a novel, evah!

The next week I bought it, and devoured in in 36 hours (darn work days). And now, it is easily my favorite Brust novel, and one of my all-time favorite novels. It has some issues, it’s a little plodding in places, and, very similar to his Vlad novels in many ways, has a mystery that needs solving that doesn’t really get much attention until it kind of solves itself around the anti-hero protagonist. But the writing is beautiful and compelling, and the sense of danger and drama Brust creates around the eponymous character, is strong and brutal.

So, what’s up with Jo? Why am I upset? Because I think she unintentionally sold me false expectations. I think she is implying in her article, that the fact that Agyar is a vampire, is the spoiler. This is so absurd of an idea that I have no problem mentioning the vampire issue in this blog because it’s referred to not just on the book’s back and jacket, but it’s obvious within the first chapter.

But here’s the absolute cool thing about what Brust does: Agyar is the narrator. So never once in the entire book is the word vampire mentioned. Now, it’s not like how zombie films act like there aren’t such things as zombie films so you get zombies being called “walkers” and stuff. Vampires and their representation likely exist in the world of Agyar, but there’s ever any reason for the character to ever say the word. And when he describes vampire-like things he does, like mind control/hypnotism and blood drinking, it’s described in the same manner anything normal is described, by focusing on outcomes and reactions, not the act itself.

Like this, it sounds like Brust is being opaque and annoyingly obscure, but when you read it… well, it’s just brilliant and skillful writing. And why I’m afraid Jo might be implying that the vampire thing is the spoiler, when it’s so not. It’s obviously Brust does not intend Agyar being a vampire to be secret and surprising — what he is doing, at worst, is playing a game with the reader (in a good way) in seeing if the reader can grok what’s going on when Agyar describes something with spare and careful description.

Now, there is one actual spoiler, that actually isn’t revealed until the end, and it does affect the early reading of the book. And it is brilliant and incredibly emotion-wrenching. So, why do I think Jo wasn’t referring to this spoiler? Well, yes, she could have been. But as impactful and emotional as it is, it’s still not that significant and mind-altering as to claim it changes the way the entire book is read, like say “Sixth Sense” of “Fight Club” did.

Well, if you’re a light horror fan, an anti-hero story fan, a vampire fan, or even fantasy/drama/romance fan at all, you must read this novel! In a way, I’m glad I did wait so long to read it, so that my life of experience and emotion could help Agyar make as strong of an impact on me as it did.

Steven Brust, on blacklisting Orson Scott Card, has somewhat changed my mind

By Liam

On February 21, 2013

In Personal, Writers

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Steven Brust is my favorite fantasy author. (In fact, I’ll be making another post shortly regarding his novel Agyar, which I actually only recently read for the first time! Wow.) He’s made a couple of blog posts recently about the kerfuffle regarding the raving homophobe Orson Scott Card’s stint writing some Superman for DC comics, and whether the calls for boycott and forcing DC to refuse to have him is ethical or effective, especially for those of us who identify as liberal or politically left.

Allow me to break in for a moment with some dreaded metablog stuff: This here lil blog of mine, I’ve set up and desire to keep in the style of John Scalzi’s (one of my favorite SF writers). That is, keep it reasonably politics-free and avoid controversial issues too much. I get all controversally elsewhere, and I want to keep this blog focused primarily and nice ol’ writing and craft-related issues. But, well, when you have something like my favorite writer talking about one of my most disliked writers, regarding an issue that I find personally important–well, I guess I have to take a moment to risk controversy.

So, Brust’s latest post, “Free Speech, Blacklisting, and Tactics,” provokes thoughts and challenges many ingrained liberal reactions to go beyond protesting a perceived injustice to boycotting and preventing someone from work and expression of their opinions. In very brief, he essentially says that limiting the free speech of someone whose purpose is to actively harm the rights and liberties of another group, is right and just. However, what possibly outweighs that lesser evil, is the greater evil that the tactics of boycott and censorship and limiting people’s speech and right to free enterprise, is far too easily turned on to and used against the usual minority that fights for rights and liberties of the oppressed. In other words: because we leftists and liberals are the usual victims of fascist oppression, we should not use the same tools of oppression that those in power use on us, regardless of the rightness of the intent.

It’s a very compelling argument, and, naturally, better presented and explained in Brust’s own words. That said, while, I may no longer support efforts to keep Card from getting work or speaking his bigoted opinions, you can be sure as shootin’ that none of my money will ever be going to him and his works. (Seeing the upcoming “Ender’s Game” film, a book I loved before I realized what a d-bag Card was, is problematic. Maybe I’ll see it when it hits the second-run theater where it’s less likely much of my money will end up in his pocket. Even .001 cent is too much.)

I want to copy here a follow-up quote that Brust posted on his blog later:

This brief excerpt is from The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk (one of my heroes) page 75:

“Years later, I was talking with him [Oscar Brandt] and expressed my disgust that that he, or maybe someone else, had put on a show with Burl Ives, who had outraged us all by naming a string of names in front of HUAC. Oscar just quietly said, ‘Dave, we on the left do not blacklist.’ Put me right in my place.”

Do a little to help working authors?

By Liam

On August 25, 2012

In News and Issues, Personal, Writers

Steven Brust, Emma Bull, and a fan

A while back I blogged about my favorite fantasy artist’s health scare. He’s recently had heart surgery, as a good friend and collaborator of his, Emma Bull, also went through a procedure. Naturally, because they’re very hard working, talented writers in America who make their living with the sweat of their brow as artists–they get paid crap and health insurance is likely non-existent for them. (Our country’s insurance-care system is, besides horrific just on its own merit, absolutely cruel to anyone who strives to follow their artistic passions or actually be an entrepreneur certain political groups give lots of lip service supporting… but I digress….) Cory Doctorow, an amazing writer and activist, a favorite author of mine, and someone who has said will never again let his family live in the U.S. because of our insurance-care system, explains the issue in his Boing Boing article.

Another excellent author, Scott Lynch, is raising donations to help them with their medical bills. Here: http://www.scottlynch.us/ironsands.html, then clicking the “Donate” button on the left.

I’m sorry about the political ranting there, I try to avoid anything political on this site–but this issue, as I’ve discussed before, is greatly important to me: the near inability or anyone in America whose passion is artistic and creative in nature, to be able to devote themselves to their craft, is, in my mind, cruel and completely anti-civilized. Any advanced society should allow their creative citizens as much access to life and health as a wage-slave has, equally. All citizens of an enlightened society should have equal access to life and health.

But, I digress once again.

Forget the politics: If you care at all for helping hard-working writers afford their medical care, please consider donating! Thank you.

Side note: Another most excellent, favorite scifi author of mine, John Scalzi, noticed Brust’s humorous ode to Scalzi’s highly popular blog, “Whatever.” Then, Scalzi featured others setting Brust’s words to music! (I prefer the ukulele.)

Update; Brust, health, and artists.

By Liam

On May 10, 2012

In Books, News and Issues, Personal, Writers

update

First, a quick update on my books. I’m still waiting for Singularity Deferred to get accepted into the premium catalog, which will put the book into Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iTunes. Until then, I’m not really advertising in any significant way its existence on Smashwords and Amazon. Once I can officially say, “Available everywhere ebooks are sold,” I’m spamming the world! (Okay, not really. I kinda like not being hated. But I’ll be letting people know, easy like.)

However, without any advertising at all, it’s selling pretty well already, somehow! Eighteen copies in two weeks. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider no marketing, and most self-published people on Smashwords sell 0, that’s not bad! My ultimate goal is to be able to sell enough on this book and my short story collection, to be able to make a car payment a month. With the next book, up that to rent each month. I think it’s do-able.

Brust & artists

So, Steven Brust is one of my all-time favorite writers, let alone fantasy writers. I’ll explain in a later post how I first got introduced to his work, the Dragaera series, and how he took the time to reply to an email way back in ’96, and his opening the door for my exploring Marxian criticism. My novel I just spoke of, Singularity Deferred–while I don’t directly imitate his style, the voice of his hero, Vlad Taltos, who is usually the 1st-person narrator of the Dragaera books, it was a very heavy influence.

Anyway, so, he posted on his blog several days ago a recent health scare he suffered. A potentially very serious health scare! After Maurice Sendak’s recent passing, my thoughts have turned to the mortality of the people who inspire you, and I’m both depressed and, ironically, gladdened that they had the chance to affect my life. I do hope Brust continues to have a long and healthy life. …and not just because he must finish his Vlad books! *evil grin* But seriously: his flair, his hat and mustache, his music and Renaissance Fair panache, would be sorely missed — even by those of us who have never met him.

On a related note, this part of his post disturbs me greatly:

I’m told I could use an operation to insert something into my chest that will shock my heart if it goes into, uh, I don’t remember. Ventrical a-fib, maybe? But it’s supposed to keep me alive. I can no more afford the operation than I can pay the hospital bills I just incurred, BUT….

I met with a social worker, who seems confident she can get me heath care–enough to help with those bills[…]

The U.S. is the only modern nation in which people go without lifesaving healthcare because they can’t afford it. Now, I try not to get political on this blog (that’s what Facebook is for), except when critiquing a work, but this very directly affects artists, like us writers. If you live in the U.S., it’s almost impossible to be an artist unless you’re single, young and healthy, and can risk living without health insurance. (Technically, no one can risk being without health insurance, considering everything from a car wreak to cancer can happen to you no matter what your age.)

The only reason I can’t devote myself full-time to my writing, the reason it’s taken me years to write anything significant, and I can’t put more writing out in a timely manner, much less make my publishing imprint viable, is because I’m forced to treat all that as a hobby in my spare time as I have to work full-time for the health insurance to cover my family. Don’t get me wrong, I like my full-time day job OK–it could be worse. But I’m trapped and chained to a job that’s my second choice, unable to do what I love, because of our country’s for-profit insurance-based “healthcare” system.

I’ve seen blog after blog, post after post, article after article, of people in Canada and Europe, who are able to spend those crucial early years honing their craft by throwing themselves completely into it, unafraid of how they’re going to be able to afford a broken leg or a bout of pneumonia, knowing there’s no such thing as going bankrupt for having the audacity to want to be healthy and well.

Okay, again, sorry for the rant; I promise it’s a rare occasion. The subject just really, really bothers me. People whose occupation is to write our culture’s novels, paint our art, compose our music, shouldn’t be forced to choose among not doing those things, becoming financially ruined paying the bills for staying alive despite producing a career full of works, or choosing to not have medically necessary treatments. Nobody should be forced to die because they can’t afford life-saving treatment.

Xeni Jardin of, among other things, BoingBoing.net, has been posting healthcare relevant articles lately as she’s been dealing with her own cancer. One recent article has a collection of stories by people in the U.S. who have had family members who have died from disease because they couldn’t afford the treatments and chose not to tell their family about it until too late, so as to spare them the financial ruin and destitution of medical costs.

And, unlike every other modern nation, we’ve set ours up so that our artists and creators are unfairly more often than not the victims of this for-profit health care insurance system. It’s very depressing.

Brust on Capital

By Liam

On February 17, 2010

In Criticism and Reviews, Personal, Philosophy, Prose

First, a little story:

I’ve been a huge fan of SF author Steven Brust since circa 1988 when Taltos came out. (I didn’t know at the time that was not the first in the “Vlad Taltos” series, but it worked out OK.) After becoming a fan, I discovered Brust was a self-described Trotskyist. Being in my teens, early to mid-20s, I really didn’t have any idea what that was but I knew it was somehow connected to GASP! evil Communism! One part of my brain processed this information something like, “Huh, his writing is kick-ass, he seems really cool…perhaps whatever Trotskyism is it’s either a) inconsequential to who he is, or b) it’s not some all-encompassing evilness as my culture leads me to believe.” The other half of my mind processed more like, “LA LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING! I SEE NOTHINK! I HEAR NOTHINK! MOVE ALONG, CITIZEN!”

So the cognitive dissonance was dealt with by ardently ignoring it.

Until around 2007 when I started grad school and my first instructor was Dr. William Burling: the most influential professor, and one of the most influential persons, I’d ever met. I had the privilege of being a student of his for three (almost four) fantastic classes. What his greatest influence on me was to introduce me to the idea of questioning culture, society, government, art, everything. Everything is, to a greater or lesser degree, either a product of or a reflector of the socio-economic base of a culture and nearly everything in the culture is in service to those who control the wealth in society. In short, Dr. Burling was a Marxist, and by the fortune of serendipity, happened to come into my life just as I was questioning political structures.

At that time I was moving from Democrat to vague libertarian. It took nearly a year of questioning and study and investigation and debate, but eventually I too became a self-described Marxist. Although I’ve barely scratched the surface still of Marxist theory.

So, at one point as Dr. Burling and I were discussing Marxist theory and SF and fantasy literature, I realized something from the long forgotten recesses of my mind… (See, I kinda stopped reading Mr. Brust’s books by this point–not because I stopped liking them, but I’d pretty much stopped reading for pleasure altogether! I am glad to say I’ve since picked pleasure reading back up and have caught back up with all of Mr. Brust’s “Taltos” books at least.) I recalled that tidbit of info about my favorite fantasy author being a Trotskyist. I asked Dr. Burling, who had introduced me to Stanley Kim Robinson, and China Miéville, and Philip K. Dick, and a Marxist outlook of William Gibson (who, now, I have no idea how you couldn’t read Gibson with a Marxist outlook! My god, the man is postmodern materialist cultural criticism up and down!) if he had read any Steven Brust. He replied, somewhat dismissively that he didn’t have time for any pleasure reading. Then I mentioned Mr. Brust was a Trotskyist and, if I recalled, wrote in a couple of his novels about a peasant uprising in his fantasy world.

Dr. Burling grabbed a pen and asked me what that name was again.

Sadly, Dr. Burling passed away a couple of years later. I never did find out if he started looking into Brust’s writing. Probably not; he was pretty busy, in addition to teaching, editing a book of essays on Kim Stanley Robinson and working with Miéville on a book of criticism about Marxist SF. *sigh* I still feel acute sense of honor of having been able to know the man and learn from him. He changed my entire way of looking at life and I could have missed it if I’d been a couple of years too late.

Anyway, so now that I’m deep in trying to learn and understand Marxist theory, both as it applies to literature and culture, guess what my favorite Trotskyist fantasy author has started doing? He’s reading and commenting on Karl Marx’s seminal work on socio-economics, Das Kapital.* (Volume 1, I believe, which is the one Marx had worked mostly on before he died, while Engels wrote the other volumes.)

What’s really cool is that just before this he had read through and commented on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (arguably the father of and the manual of modern capitalism). This kicked-ass because not only did I learn something from it (unfortunately I came in rather late), it just goes to show that Brust is interested in exploring all the angles of modern socio-economics and doesn’t just surround himself with material that fits his perceptions or ideologies. That’s certainly a quality to admire and emulate.

I’m looking forward to reading what he has to say about the tome. And I’m very glad that one side of my brain stopped being a pest and started paying attention. Marxism is not evil, Trotskyism is not evil, communism is not evil. These are just ideas, concepts, ways of investigating and ideas are never evil. They may not be good or practical ideas, but one should never dismiss a way of thinking, a way of investigating, because authority has proclaimed it verboten, taboo, out of bounds. Question everything, especially authority. There’s a reason why they are in power, and a means by which they stay in power.

* I think he’s moving his blog over to a new location. I’ll try to update this link if I can when it happens.

Tag: Steven Brust

Agyar… oh my god! Also, I’m irked at Jo Walton

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