Spoon me! or, I want my denouement
Jun. 5th, 2011 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
justalurkrSo, I've been downloading bargain e-books from Booksprung, and think I have noticed a trend after reading two of them in rapid succession.
Containment by Christian Cantrell (.99 cents -- this guy prices his own stuff at amazon and lets you have it for free at his website. In my opinion, he is an Author Who Gets It.)
Amazon product description:
As Earth's ability to support human life begins to diminish at an alarming rate, the Global Space Agency is formed with a single mandate: protect humanity from extinction by colonizing the solar system as quickly as possible. Venus, being almost the same mass as Earth, is chosen over Mars as humanity’s first permanent steppingstone into the universe.
Arik Ockley is part of the first generation to be born and raised off-Earth. After a puzzling accident, Arik wakes up to find that his wife is almost three months pregnant. Since the colony’s environmental systems cannot safely support any increases in population, Arik immediately resumes his work on AP, or artificial photosynthesis, in order to save the life of his unborn child. Arik’s new and frantic research uncovers startling truths about the planet, and about the distorted reality the founders of the colony have constructed for Arik’s entire generation. Everything Arik has ever known is called into question, and he must figure out the right path for himself, his wife, and his unborn daughter.
justalurkr sez: Outstanding story, right up to the end. Maybe I mean except for the end? I remember thinking "maybe it's just this guy," then I read...
The Dishonored Dead: A Zombie Novel by Robert Swartwood (as of this post, on sale for .99 cents at amazon, says for a limited time)
Amazon product description:
In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed.
Conrad is one of the animated dead. A devoted husband, a loving father, he is the best zombie Hunter in the world. But when he hesitates one night in killing a living adult, his job is put in jeopardy. Instead of being outright dismissed, he is transferred to a program so secretive even the Government would deny its existence — and where Conrad soon learns a startling truth about how his own son might be in danger of becoming a zombie.
As living extremists become more emboldened and blow up a Hunter Headquarters, as a power-hungry Hunter becomes more enraged and will stop at nothing to gain absolute power, Conrad begins to question not just his profession, but his own existence. And before he knows it he is on a journey of self-discovery, remembering a past he was forced to forget, and soon finding himself not only a hunted man, but a man who must now save both his son and the entire world.
...and that novel just stopped, too, although I felt it was a considerably better-handled just stop.
Question: is this engaging-to-the-freakishly-sudden-end some modern/post-modern/post-post-modern literary to break the commercial mold, or am I seeing part of the reason some authors will only ever self-publish?
Both books use the limited third person point of view and end with the apparent (but with wiggle room) death (or expiration, the undead not being alive and all) of the main character. Had they been told from a first person point of view, it would make sense just to stop when the character died, but using third person limited? It felt like cheap conceit to me, especially since neither novel seems built for continuing into a sequel. Both endings came across more as authorial "I'm done with the story and if you're not, oh well."
On the upside, my reaction is more eggs in the basket of why those people author Laurell K. Hamilton calls "Negative Readers" (all links to that "essay" appear to be dead, btw, and am too lazy for the wayback machine at the mo) can't keep it to him or herself. To wit, those were (and are) outrageously good yarns until they...just stop, and I for one was left wanting more, but not in a good way. Maybe the authorial knitting needles broke?
From a fanfic point of view:
Containment was tight, at least for me. It's entirely possible that keeping track of that plot exhausted the author to the point at which he looked at his final scene and said "that'll do, dudes," before swan-diving into a globe-spanning generational epic that would kill a normal person trying to write it at the level of the first bit (with the exception of Kim Stanley Robinson, of course, but is he normal?) On the other hand, maybe a sequel could be called "Uncontained"? This book is also the first pro-fic (or at least semi-profic) I've read in a long time that would have made more sense as m/m or EIG (everyone is gay) slash fiction and only got more so the longer it went on, even though every single character is lawfully and heterosexually (still the same thing in GA, but not all of you are here) wed, and to just one other person, which should have been a clue to the plot from the git-go. Plot falls into man vs. society and man vs. nature.
The Dishonored Dead precluded any notion of slash between the most logical characters because necrophilia is not my thing, though I do wonder what Conrad would have called it. Biophilia? Also, the point of the story at which Conrad and Gabriel were least likely to kill/expire each other, there wasn't much time or horizontal surface availability. (coff) Moving on...in my opinion, the best fanfiction comes from a brilliant story idea poorly executed with the subset of excellent slash or even hetship stemming from one or more character relationships that are more interesting than the poorly executed story. In that light, the opportunities for fanfic on this one are much thinner on the ground, as this is a brilliant idea and very well executed indeed. Plot falls into the man vs. man, man vs. society area, though the undead thing does put a nice twist on the usual plot question in man vs. nature context. :D
Containment by Christian Cantrell (.99 cents -- this guy prices his own stuff at amazon and lets you have it for free at his website. In my opinion, he is an Author Who Gets It.)
Amazon product description:
As Earth's ability to support human life begins to diminish at an alarming rate, the Global Space Agency is formed with a single mandate: protect humanity from extinction by colonizing the solar system as quickly as possible. Venus, being almost the same mass as Earth, is chosen over Mars as humanity’s first permanent steppingstone into the universe.
Arik Ockley is part of the first generation to be born and raised off-Earth. After a puzzling accident, Arik wakes up to find that his wife is almost three months pregnant. Since the colony’s environmental systems cannot safely support any increases in population, Arik immediately resumes his work on AP, or artificial photosynthesis, in order to save the life of his unborn child. Arik’s new and frantic research uncovers startling truths about the planet, and about the distorted reality the founders of the colony have constructed for Arik’s entire generation. Everything Arik has ever known is called into question, and he must figure out the right path for himself, his wife, and his unborn daughter.
justalurkr sez: Outstanding story, right up to the end. Maybe I mean except for the end? I remember thinking "maybe it's just this guy," then I read...
The Dishonored Dead: A Zombie Novel by Robert Swartwood (as of this post, on sale for .99 cents at amazon, says for a limited time)
Amazon product description:
In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed.
Conrad is one of the animated dead. A devoted husband, a loving father, he is the best zombie Hunter in the world. But when he hesitates one night in killing a living adult, his job is put in jeopardy. Instead of being outright dismissed, he is transferred to a program so secretive even the Government would deny its existence — and where Conrad soon learns a startling truth about how his own son might be in danger of becoming a zombie.
As living extremists become more emboldened and blow up a Hunter Headquarters, as a power-hungry Hunter becomes more enraged and will stop at nothing to gain absolute power, Conrad begins to question not just his profession, but his own existence. And before he knows it he is on a journey of self-discovery, remembering a past he was forced to forget, and soon finding himself not only a hunted man, but a man who must now save both his son and the entire world.
...and that novel just stopped, too, although I felt it was a considerably better-handled just stop.
Question: is this engaging-to-the-freakishly-sudden-end some modern/post-modern/post-post-modern literary to break the commercial mold, or am I seeing part of the reason some authors will only ever self-publish?
Both books use the limited third person point of view and end with the apparent (but with wiggle room) death (or expiration, the undead not being alive and all) of the main character. Had they been told from a first person point of view, it would make sense just to stop when the character died, but using third person limited? It felt like cheap conceit to me, especially since neither novel seems built for continuing into a sequel. Both endings came across more as authorial "I'm done with the story and if you're not, oh well."
On the upside, my reaction is more eggs in the basket of why those people author Laurell K. Hamilton calls "Negative Readers" (all links to that "essay" appear to be dead, btw, and am too lazy for the wayback machine at the mo) can't keep it to him or herself. To wit, those were (and are) outrageously good yarns until they...just stop, and I for one was left wanting more, but not in a good way. Maybe the authorial knitting needles broke?
From a fanfic point of view:
Containment was tight, at least for me. It's entirely possible that keeping track of that plot exhausted the author to the point at which he looked at his final scene and said "that'll do, dudes," before swan-diving into a globe-spanning generational epic that would kill a normal person trying to write it at the level of the first bit (with the exception of Kim Stanley Robinson, of course, but is he normal?) On the other hand, maybe a sequel could be called "Uncontained"? This book is also the first pro-fic (or at least semi-profic) I've read in a long time that would have made more sense as m/m or EIG (everyone is gay) slash fiction and only got more so the longer it went on, even though every single character is lawfully and heterosexually (still the same thing in GA, but not all of you are here) wed, and to just one other person, which should have been a clue to the plot from the git-go. Plot falls into man vs. society and man vs. nature.
The Dishonored Dead precluded any notion of slash between the most logical characters because necrophilia is not my thing, though I do wonder what Conrad would have called it. Biophilia? Also, the point of the story at which Conrad and Gabriel were least likely to kill/expire each other, there wasn't much time or horizontal surface availability. (coff) Moving on...in my opinion, the best fanfiction comes from a brilliant story idea poorly executed with the subset of excellent slash or even hetship stemming from one or more character relationships that are more interesting than the poorly executed story. In that light, the opportunities for fanfic on this one are much thinner on the ground, as this is a brilliant idea and very well executed indeed. Plot falls into the man vs. man, man vs. society area, though the undead thing does put a nice twist on the usual plot question in man vs. nature context. :D
