I did a book review! I don’t want to spoil it for people just scrolling by, so find it here.
Fantasy
Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #20 – The Other Worlds of History (4/6/19)
Recent headlines:
World: PM to challenge Trump’s approach on climate (Oh good, we’re saved)
Gaming: Microsoft is bring more games to Steam (Crackdown plsssss)
I’ve been playing: World of Warcraft (PvP time), Super Mario Bros (yes, that one.)
I love history. I love history because it challenges our notions of what normality is. Normality for me was the starting template of school, making friends, growing within the educational system, leaving, attending university, getting a job… and much more to come. Normality for me is the domesticated life which leaves room for hobbies and encourages creativity. If my life was a story, the main antagonists would be poor mental health and ignorance from people in power. Omitting quite a few larger details, that basic picture is what normality is for me, what life is. But a few thousand years ago, normality for someone else included the expectation that you’d join the army, don heavy armour and cut down foes with a sword. Normality was defending your home against barbaric invaders with spear and shield. A completely different world.
History is fascinating to me because a lot of the events which shaped our world now sound like fantastical stories. I see humans walking down the street, caught up in their normal lives with their phones and their cars and their jobs, who in a different time would be warriors, smiths, map-makers. Most of us aren’t giving a second thought to how much the world around us defines who we are. In a thousand years, if we still exist, who will these people who walk the streets be then? What will be important to them? What will they think of the humans of 2019? I can’t imagine history is going to look back on us fondly, or as much more than a society which was obsessed with burying their heads in the sand.
I’m rambling about history because a new HBO miniseries has been exploring the events of the catastrophe of the nuclear power plant of Chernobyl in 1986. This isn’t ancient history, but it’s fascinating in an altogether different way in that this was the world nine years before I was born; a world before smartphones and widespread adoption of the internet, and thus, a world before easily accessible and fast-travelling information. This is also set in Soviet Ukraine, so a cultural divide is more prominent than a historical one, for sure. Information is clearly shown to be weaponized here, with paranoia and ignorance fuelling mismanagement and misunderstanding on a colossally deadly scale.
Chernobyl is fascinating, yes, but more-so terrifying. I don’t personally recall being taught anything about the events of the Chernobyl disaster in school – whether due to a gap in education or my own wandering mind, I don’t know – and while I’ve obviously heard about the broad strokes of what happened, I’ve been watching most of this series in fresh horror. Now this is a drama, so everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt, and I’ll certainly look up the historical accuracy of these plot points when I’ve seen the final episode. But wow. I had no idea how close we came to a much larger scale tragedy occurring in 1986. Several times! In multiple scenarios, if certain people hadn’t made certain actions and decisions at certain times, Chernobyl could have lead to a mostly irradiated Europe or a mostly radioactive European water supply. At least, that’s what I took away from the show. As I said, I’ll be checking up on this later.
My father was 21 when this happened. Now obviously, information on the details of this catastrophe was kept secret for a long time by Soviet Ukraine, but it did eventually come out. I’m trying to imagine what my reaction would be to the news that a nuclear catastrophe has occurred on the other side of the continent, and I think it’d mostly be one of intense fear. I mean, I’m already appalled at the stalwart apathy world leaders are showing to the climate crisis regarding our impending doom, but something like Chernobyl sounds so much more immediate. My father has told me before about how growing up during the Cold War he pretty much expected the world to end in his lifetime, but this is the first time I think I’ve really stopped to imagine what that must have been like.
I fear that in this blog post I come across as privileged and naive. And I’d just like to say that while my life certainly has its fair share of difficulty, that’s probably fair to say. I’ve grown up in a Western world, never directly affected by war, or famine, or widespread civilian death seen so often throughout history, up to and surpassing Chernobyl. People who want nothing more than to live out their lives, but die due to war driven by some powerful man’s hatred, or due to some disaster mishandled by an apathetic government. I am, relatively speaking, extremely lucky. And one of the reasons why history seems to fantastic to me is because I’ve never had to live through its hardships. Hardships which are still occurring in many places across the globe today. I just felt that I should acknowledge that I know this. But perhaps we all need to be reminded of that sometimes.
Oh bother, I was going to write about how I turn 24 in a few days and how my attitude to aging has changed over recent years. Feels a bit shallow to do that now, here. Maybe next week!
Further reading:
The Weekly Deathmatch #58 – Splitgate: Arena Warfare – Now You’re Killing With Portals
Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #15 – A Decade in the Making, Twice (29/4/19)
Recent headlines
World: Nothing good or noteworthy, if I’m perfectly honest.
Gaming: ‘Minecraft’ Creator Excluded From Anniversary Due to ‘Comments and Opinions’ (Being a transphobic white supremacist definitely merits being written out of your legacy. Justice is sweet.)
It’s time to write this week’s Year by Year journal post, but I’m just sorta sat here in shocked silence. For context, yesterday I saw Avengers: Endgame and today I saw Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3, ‘The Long Night’. That these two major, climactic battles that have been being built towards for about a decade each should occur within the same weekend seems like some cosmic commiseration for the dull chaos occurring in politics. Whereas both the movie and the show dealt with characters of uncommon values coming together to face an overwhelming existential threat, the governments of today continue to ignore climate change and prejudicial hatred amongst society. That may seem like an odd segue, but when you think about it, fictional works of science fiction and fantasy are created to mirror our world, with enough differences to get us emotionally invested so that we can learn about the follies of humankind without feeling preached at. If we do fall to inaction or hatred, we will have one emotion to blame: our pride.
Speaking a little more directly about Avengers and Game of Thrones (and mild, year-old spoilers ahead), I have to say that the most exciting thing is speculating about where they go from here. The Marvel Cinematic Universe still has no end in sight, though the first three ‘phases’ of the MCU from Iron Man to Endgame have been labelled as ‘The Infinity Saga’ – I have to wonder if they’ll spin up some new over-arcing storyline or whether they’ll concentrate more on individuals with the occasional crossover. Game of Thrones has, by the end of The Long Night, tackled what most people would label the definitive threat of the show, and while there’s still [the only other threat] left to deal with, I can’t see that stretching for three episodes with a satisfying conclusion, at the pace they’re going. So for both of these franchises which I love so much, I’m at a place where I can’t predict much about what’s going to occur. I write this down because, of course, perhaps Future Kristian will know more!
Part of the reason this project exists is to preserve a memory of my perspective of a period of time in my life, and I’ve found that the fastest memories to fade are ones of how I felt about a piece of fiction when first experiencing it. I can’t tell you what my reaction was to the Red Wedding, whether I even read it or watched it first as it was around that time that I paused my reading of the books to try out the show. I’d love to know what my thoughts on the nascent MCU were after watching Thor. I can tell you that my first lasting experience with Star Wars was the Lego Star Wars videogame, and I’ll never disassociate the two.
A lot of my life right now is just me being absorbed in the worlds I love. I was concerned for a while last week that I was too invested in fiction as I often use it for escapism, but given that I’m in a fairly good place right now, I think it’s just that everything’s getting really fucking good.
We have three weeks left of Game of Thrones. Afterwards, I’m sure I’ll be less distracted and will write about things of more consequence.
Further reading:
Book Review: Mistborn & Audible First Impressions
No, this blog post is not sponsored by Audible. I’m legitimately talking about their service. But, firstly:
The following review contains no specific spoilers, though as always, if you wish to enter into a series completely blind then I recommend you skip this review. If you’re interested in the Audible portion of this blog post, scroll until you see the header text.
When casting around for something to read after Harry Potter some time ago I discovered that a series of books I’d kept my eye on – namely, the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson – was on sale on Kindle for £1 per book. Being the eager beaver that I am, I almost dived right in and bought all seven available books, but I decided on this one occasion to hold back and buy only the original trilogy, in case the series wasn’t to my taste and I wasted my money. Boy, was that a mistake. I need more. Not that the conclusion to the trilogy wasn’t satisfying – it was, and it was brilliant – and that’s all I’ll say on the ending.
I’ve seen Sanderson’s works described as avoiding fantasy stereotypes expertly, and I can only agree with this notion. The method of magic in the Mistborn novels isn’t something I’ve ever read about before. Not to spoil too much, I’ll stick to saying that it’s very logic-based and contains limitations which reach a balance of not being too restricting, whilst avoiding any deux-ex-machina type plot holes. If I was to write a self-indulgent piece of fantasy, I admit that I’d likely base magical power on will rather than skill. Skill-based abilities, however, make your characters more admirable when they’re badass. And Vin is certainly that.
I’ve always said that written works are inferior to other platforms of fiction when it comes to scenes of action. One notable moment when I’ve found myself wrong on this has been when reading the novel Stormrage. This is another one of those moments. Allomancy allows for very momentum based combat, with the ability to pull yourself onto and push yourself off of various metals, as well as being able to enhance your strength. One of the first fight scenes in the first book, The Final Empire, sees Kelsier facing off against a group of soldiers who are trained to kill allomancers. Limited to what he can use his powers for, he finds a metal paperweight at his disposal, and the way in which he manipulates its trajectory to attack these soldiers is something that you have to read for yourself.
The world is as unique as its magic. The premise presented on the blurb of the first book is of a world where the bad guy has won, and ruled for a thousand years. This is what drew me into it. Sanderson creates a world of mists, ash and little colour without making any of it feel drab or overly depressing. Flowers are a forgotten legend. Stars are known only to those with the power to enhance their vision, to part the mists. And the world makes do. Any action against the Lord Ruler is typically more to do with stopping his tyranny than with fanatical dreams of revitalising the world, for this is the world that mankind has known as home for a thousand years.
My favourite thing about this series is how intricately plotted it is. The powers, races and state of the world all add up together towards the end of the trilogy in multiple moments of revelation. You’ll race alongside the characters to the truth as they discover deception, lies, and world-changing secrets dating back a thousand years or more. And without giving away too much, I feel like it’s important to praise the ramping up in scale of events over the three books that’s both impressive and believable, right up to the climax of the series.
Branderson (that was a typo but I’ll leave it in) has written more Mistborn novels set some centuries after the original trilogy, around the time of industrial revolution with trains being made popular, skyscrapers being built and electricity being discovered. These are the next novels I need to read – I’m very interested in what a more modern world would look like in a world where metals can be manipulated by allomancy. What really excites me is that Sanderson has stated that he also plans to write more Mistborn novels set even further in the future, in a time further ahead in technology than our own. The prospect of a series graduating from medieval setting to a futuristic one is something I’ve never seen done before – unless you count the narrative in World of Warcraft slowly become more sci-fi-esque – and I greatly look forward to reading more.
And that’s the review. If you’re skipping this bit, you can read on from here.
I’m kind of hoping that the other Mistborn books go on sale again. In the meantime, I found myself casting around for something to read again, and decided to finally use my Audible trial. Now, I could have used my free book to obtain The Alloy of Law, the next book in the Mistborn series, but I’d rather not own a continuation of a series in a different format. Brandon Sanderson has won my attention, though, and I decided to use my free Audible book token to grab The Way of Kings, the first book in the Stormlight Archive series. Well… more like the first two books, as in the UK it’s typically split into two 500 page paperbacks. So that’s 1,000 pages and 45 hours of listening I’ve just obtained for free. Except that when I went to cancel the subscription, they bribed me to stay with a second book token, so I claimed the sequel, Words of Radiance, which is equally as long. And then I cancelled my trial to no charge.
I’m going to be good for fiction for the next 94 hours of listening, then. I only hope that this still counts as a purchase on the author / narrator’s side of pay.
I’m like, 3 chapters in, so I have nothing to say about the story yet, other than it seems familiar and good. I’m here to discuss audio as a mode of listening. My first impression is that I have to pay attention. Not that it isn’t captivating, but if I’m on the edge of sleep and my mind begins to wander I have to either rewind by 30 seconds to catch the names of new settings, characters and powers I’m not yet accustomed to, or decided to switch it off for the night. I’ve also found that when reading, I’ll pause after being introduced to a new name – be it place, character or power – and go back and turn it over a few times in my head. You can’t control the pace so easily in an audiobook. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.
I have listened to audio dramas before, though, and whilst it’s a bit different hearing everything being read by just one person, it’s also a welcome return to the experience of listening to fiction. There’s something about being able to lay back, close your eyes and allow your imagination to fully take over whilst hearing the story narrated to you. And at the end of the day, when I look back on the first three chapters and compare them to other reading experiences, I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed them just as much as any other book. I look forward to enjoying these two long-ass books, and seeing how they compare to the Mistborn series.
A Beginner’s World Crafting Woes
I like fantasy. It’s pretty much my go-to fiction. And what I like most about a good fantasy world is its lore, how its gods shaped the lands and the origin of magic, and all that good stuff. And so naturally, I’ve been drawn to the idea of creating my own fantasy world. But it really is no small feat.
I’ve had this idea for a fantasy world in my head since about December, but I’ve still not found myself capable of sitting down and fleshing out the world. Some would probably advise me to just write and see what happens from there, but I’ve tried that and I find myself hitting a wall every 5 minutes because I’ve not already established the laws and rules of the world. And yet, sitting down and trying to plot everything out and build the world from scratch, despite sounding like a super interesting and fun task, quickly devolves into boredom or an itching to write in a universe that’s already been made.
The general idea is to create a fantasy world that I’m going to be able to write new stories in for years to come, whether they be short stories, novels, or other forms of fiction. This would mean establishing a timeline of events and considering how much I want to shape and change the world with each storytelling event that happens within it. Some stories would inevitably feature heroes and villains on a scale of which would make history and be spoken of for generations. Other stories would be smaller, more focused on the lives of the everyday, perhaps those who stand in the shadows of these forerunning legends and have to live with the consequences of their actions. I’m actually more interested in writing the latter of those two possibilities. But every time I attempt to make a start or continue to build the world, I run into issues of attention span and motivation which I won’t bore you with in this blog post.
I’ve also considered the idea that I’m starting off too grand in my storytelling ventures. As a new writer, I should perhaps consider a standalone novel or something, unrelated to this world which I want to build. But my default genre and current direction of writing is fantasy, and I’ve found that fantasy always demands these grand worlds and extended universes, lest they be insubstantial, boring, or lacking in the sense of wonder and scale that attracts many to the genre.
Maybe I should just keep at it. Writing this blog post alone has somehow spurred me into considering making another attempt at the fiction for the first time in weeks. Lately I’ve been considering removing myself from the internet for one day of the week each week, in an attempt to spur myself into creativity as opposed to the mindless consumption that I so readily tap into. I don’t know. I’ll continue to work on methods of self-motivation. If you have any tips for me, I’d be more than willing to hear them.
UPDATE: After writing this blog post and before publishing it, I decided to try and write something within that fantasy universe mentioned in this blog post. I wrote 1,344 words, and it feels like the prologue of a longer narrative. Woo, go me!
Series Review: The Shannara Chronicles Season 1
Mild spoilers for The Shannara Chronicles Season 1 (and likely the book series) below! If you want to approach this series with no preconceptions, avoid this blog post.
So I’ll preface this by saying that I haven’t read any of the Shannara Chronicles books by Terry Brooks. I have no idea as to the quality of content that lies within them, or how closely the Netflix show follows them, though from the blurbs of the books it would seem to be quite loosely. As somebody who normally reads the books first, this was actually a welcome change, though I do wonder how much enjoyment I’ll be able to get from reading the books now that I’ve watched the series.
I found this series simply because I was browsing Netflix for something to watch, and I almost passed over it. I’m not saying that it didn’t appeal to me, but show adaptions from novels don’t have the best track record and it was only as a last resort that I decided to give it a try. But from the opening shot, I could tell that the middling 3-star ratings had nothing to do with the budgetary commitments, and that this was a world that at the very least had plenty of care and effort put into it. This was one of my main fears, as a novelist never has to worry about budget or realistic scope of setting and scale, and the scale issue only showed in a few battle scenes… but even the big-name novel adaptions like Game of Thrones have 50 warriors where there are meant to be 50,000.
Season 1 of the Shannara Chronicles is a quest. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings, in a good way, and I’m not even very familiar with LOTR. (I’m working on it!) Having only seen the first two Lord of the Rings movies and having started reading The Fellowship of the Ring last night, it probably says something when I can immediately identify it as a direct influence and continual referral point in the Shannara Chronicles. The world is made up of Humans, Elves, Trolls, Gnomes and the notably absent Dwarves. The latter three races are descendants of humans (or at least that’s what I’ve gathered base on the incredible intro), whilst the existence of elves remains a mystery… at least, to me.
But here’s where it really hooked me. The Shannara Chronicles are an indeterminate (though later specified) few thousands of years after modern mankind’s downfall. So, while you have elves and magic and so forth, you also have decaying fallen skyscrapers and abandoned wastelands that form the backdrop of the series as a grand narrative; humanity is still recovering from this downfall even thousands of years later. The series balances this portrayal of present day society as ancient lore perfectly, making it not a main plot point or even a readily discussed matter, but a background that rarely comes into play and brings a sense of intense wonder and discovery when doing so. It is possibly my favourite part of this narrative. I often have to remind myself that this takes place on a future Earth, and that’s wonderful. I want to learn more about Earth’s fallen civilisations, and I say this in a world which is currently wrought with the same almost idealised apocalypse story over and over.
The series has its flaws, though. Most notably, the pacing takes weird jumps and skates over important developmental issues. Sometimes it’s forgiveable, such as travelling from point A to point B – a travel of weeks – over the course of one single cut. Other times, you have characters entering environments that should make their jaw drop, but they are instead already at home. You have characters lose loved ones and fail to even grieve or be affected by it. And I am 100% certain that this comes down to cut content. But even this is, as worst, merely jarring, and whilst I recall it being particularly bad at around episode two or three, it didn’t come close to deterring me from the series.
I’d also say it was somewhat predictable. Whilst it may be set in a vastly and commendably unique world, the events that take place within it are far from having never been told before. I found myself predicting events which were meant to shock me, and I can’t particularly think of any one moment that felt like a huge revelation or surprise. But perhaps that is simply me being jaded or having a foresight that any writer of the same genre might have themselves.
Just give it a watch. These last two paragraphs have been criticisms, but they’re the only bad things I have to say about an otherwise pleasantly surprising show. I highly anticipate season 2.
World Building Ain’t So Easy
There are some things you take for granted until you try to write them. Well, if you’re me, anyway.
There are two stories I’ve written recently which seemed like a grand idea in my mind, but in reality turned out to be a bit rubbish. This frustrated me into a sort of writer’s block which I’m hoping I’ve defeated through the realization I’m about to share.
The first story was for a university assignment. I had to write a Gothic and/or Sci-Fi short story for my course, so I decided to place a man from the 21st century suddenly in the 27th. The cities were larger – suburbs had become skyscrapers – and society was divided into those who worked for the dictatorship and lived in the houses, and those who were forced into cannibalism and underground living. Not the most original idea in the world, but hey, it worked. Until I went to write it down at least.
The second story was a personal project. Inspired by one of the smaller narratives found in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin – that is, the tale of Sakiel-Norn – I took it upon myself to create a world on the boundaries of a shrinking universe, a world which once held a mighty, Romanesque civilisation that had long since fallen to the madness of the void of oblivion above their heads. The main character was a boy from a tribe of surviving descendants who knew never to look up when the sky was dark enough to see “the Maw”.
The problem with these two stories is that not only did it require me to write about the tale of the character, but to write about this completely fictitious world in which they live. Which is fine, I can do that. But what I found was going wrong was that the wider social implications of what such a world would do to the character and the characters around him became difficult. Characters lost credibility. Settings required a distressing amount of narrative reinforcement. The story focused too much on dropping clever little hints about the wider world instead of what the focal point of the narrative is.
But most of all, I suppose, it’s perhaps just a little too much to ask to build an entire world and summarise the world in less than 4,000 words.
The main two things I’ve taken away from this is that writing Science Fiction perhaps isn’t my thing, and that I constantly have to be careful that my short stories don’t want to be novels instead. If you build an entire fictive world for one short story, that short story is going to think it’s too big for its boots and try to outgrow them. And then everything just falls apart.
Well, if you’re me, at least.
The most successful short story I’ve produced on my university course so far has been to do with a store robbery. The short story I wrote last night is about a cocaine addict, and it’s the first story I’ve been pleased with for a very long time. (This story can be found on my creative writing Facebook page from 7pm tonight, click the “Writing” link in the header.) What do these stories have in common? They’re about believable, flawed characters in the real world with real issues.
So I don’t know, maybe I’m just not experienced enough as a writer to tackle larger worlds quite yet. Maybe larger worlds just generally don’t fit into short stories as well as I expected. But what I do know is that for the first time in a long time, I feel confident in my writing again, and that’s all down to a change in subject matter. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of finding my own personal niche.
Perpetually Perturbed 