From the Back-List - Explaining the Unreal

Cover art from the Song of Scarabaeus on Pinterest

Here at the Supernatural Underground, we are enjoying another awesome read from our back-list, posted Thursday, July 29, 2010 by the Philip K. Dick and Aurealis Award nominee, Sara Creasy. 

In this post, she talks about the difference between paranormal and SF. 

You can check out Sara Creasy's current work, The Wynter Wild Series on her Website. Join Wynter and her brothers on a heartrending and humorous journey through elementary particles, power chords, and the many meanings of love.

* * * 

Explaining the Unreal by Sara Creasy

Goodreads Choice Nominee

As writers and readers, how do we define the difference between the science fiction and paranormal genres? Both are “unreal” (in that they are fictional) and “speculative” (in that they extrapolate from existing ideas). The paranormal by definition breaks the laws of physics, but science fiction often does too (warp speed, anyone?).


I think the difference comes in what each genre needs to explain. For example, classic vampires can’t be exposed to sunlight without terrible consequences. Readers of paranormal fiction know this fact about vampires. If the writer chooses to contradict the convention by having her vampires run around the sunny beaches of Santa Barbara, readers expect a (paranormal) explanation: that old sunlight thing is a myth, the vampire has a magic ring, or this is a tribe of new improved vampires.

On the other hand, readers of science fiction base their expectations on the natural world. If a certain creature explodes into flames in sunlight, which contradicts what we know about the natural world, the writer needs to provide a (natural) explanation: the “vampire” has a medical condition such as a total lack of melanin, or, more exotically, the vamp’s unstable atoms are prone to decay when exposed to photons of a particular wavelength.

As readers we bring a stack of wonderful knowledge with us, drawn from mythology and the real world, saving the writer from having to describe and explain everything. But when a story contradicts that knowledge, often for interesting reasons of course, we want to know why...

 

 

To read the full post, including insightful comments, click here. 

To find out more about what Sara's doing now, visit her Website.

Children of Scarabaeus – release day!

Thanks for your entries. The winner was chosen randomly (random.org) and it's Scorpio M. Congrats! I'll be contacting you for your mailing address.

Today in the US, my second book Children of Scarabaeus is released. It’s the sequel to Song of Scarabaeus, and for those of you who've read the first book, it picks up right where that story left off. Edie and Finn continue their adventures in a far-flung corner of the galaxy, attempting to bring hope to the Fringe worlds but thwarted in their plans by the dastardly Crib empire.

Edie and Finn are bound together by a “leash” – a transmitter/receiver arrangement whereby if Edie dies or goes out of range, a little bomb in Finn’s head explodes. The bad guys created the leash to force Finn, an ex-con, to become Edie’s bodyguard. Neither of them is happy about it. What makes them even more unhappy is that it’s malfunctioning. Whenever Edie feels strong emotions, Finn gets a blast of uncomfortable static directly into his brain. As you can imagine, this hinders the progression of their romantic relationship. But never fear. This couple has been through a lot together, and they don’t give up easily.

You can read the first few chapters of Children of Scarabaeus on HarperCollins’s website here. If you do read the entire book, I’d love your feedback. Tell me what you think! Email me or write a review on Amazon. If you review the book on your site, drop me a note and I'll tweet about it. Also, visit my blog this week for a chance to win a cool Finn & Edie mousemat, and follow my blog tour for other giveaways.

Giveaway time
(Happy dance!)

To celebrate the release, I'm giving away a copy of Children of Scarabaeus along with a nifty matching signed bookmark. For a chance to win, post a comment on this thread and answer this question:

What’s your favorite sci-fi romantic pairing in a book, movie or TV show?

Contest ends on Sunday 3rd April at 11:59 PM EST. I will randomly select one winner and post their name at the top of this post, so please check back after Sunday. 

What came out of her little sister's brain...

My sister is vacationing at the beach and has been reading my book, Song of Scarabaeus. With six young children, she hasn’t found it easy to get through more than 20 minutes at a time, but she just texted me to say she finished it, she loved it, and she can’t wait for the next one. Wow. “I can’t believe all these ideas came out of my little sister's brain,” she tells me. (It shouldn’t surprise her. We spent our childhoods keeping each other awake at night telling stories, and filled our vacation time by drawing comic strips and typing out silly ditties on our typewriters.)

Almost a year after the book’s release, it still amazes me when someone tells me they enjoyed it. Is this reaction of mine just a lingering effect of being on debut-author cloud nine? I don’t know. I wrote the kind of book I wanted to read – smart female protagonist in a no-win situation, sexy hero/sidekick, strong scientific elements, interesting secondary characters, and loads of action. Every time I read a nice review on a blog or on Amazon, I think, “Yay! Someone else ‘got it’.” Someone else wants to read the kind of book I want to read, the kind of book I wrote.

Last week, much to my astonishment, my book was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Heady stuff. But I’ll be honest: hearing my sister enthuse about my book – my big sister, who almost never reads fiction – means even more to me.

SF&F movies: best and worst of 2010

io9, a website devoted to all things science fictional and fantastical, has listed its top 10 best and worst movies of 2010. The lists are notable for me because -- shocking though it seems for a sci-fi writer -- I have seen only one of the movies on the Best list (along with one of the honorable mentions). I've also seen half of one of the movies on the Worst list. I started watching it on a 15-hour flight and it was indeed too terrible to finish.

Looking down the Best list, I'm seeing a couple of movies that I don't want to see because no matter how good they supposedly are, I can't watch horror movies. I just don't have the fortitude to put scary images in my head that I can never get out. But several look really interesting and I can only blame an international move, a book deadline, and a new baby for my lack of movie-watching this year.

Take a look at the list and give me your recommendations! What did you think of these movies? Which ones should I check out on DVD?  Is the new Harry Potter movie really the best one so far? Does Predators deserve its spot at #4? How about Inception at #1? (I've heard mixed reviews of that one.)

For the record, the two movies that I did get around to seeing were both ostensibly children's movies and I enjoyed them both. Toy Story 3 was a lot of fun and had one of the most emotionally draining scenes I've seen in a very long time (although I can't quite get over the fact that the teddy was irredeemable). How to Train Your Dragon was the most cliche-ridden story you can hope to see, a step-by-step guide to writing the Hero's Journey... but somehow it worked.

Mince pies and other imaginings

Writers tend to think of ourselves as creative people (and we tend to hope that our readers agree!). The desire to share our creative spirit is usually what drives us to write in the first place. I like to think of reading as a creative process, too. Unlike watching movies, where pictures are displayed for our eyes to absorb, reading books requires us to imagine the pictures. Wouldn't it be amazing to know not only what the pictures in the writer's head were when she wrote the story, but also what the pictures in different readers' heads are when they read it? Out there in the world are thousands of readers with my spaceship in their heads! And none of them look exactly like the one I created in my head and tried to put into words on a page.

The writers I know have other creative outlets, too. From painting to scrapbooking, their imaginations find expression. Several of them seem to have an obscure obsession with knitting. I always loved to draw, although I can't say my skills have improved since I was a teenager. These days I've modified that hobby to suit the digital age, using 3D and 2D graphics programs - last week I made Christmas cards featuring our baby daughter photoshopped as a mischievous elf.

I also like to cook (although I'm not very good at it), especially at Christmas. My specialty is decorated cookies. This year I've been a bit more creative than usual by seeking out new recipes for mince pies* instead of sticking with the old family standard. By seeking out, of course, I mean googling.

When you're not exercising your imagination with the help of the latest novel you're reading, where does your creativity take you?

*Mince pies appear to be largely unknown among Americans, in my experience. They're little pastry tarts filled with mincemeat, which is a sweet concoction of spiced dried fruit and vegetable suet. Serve at Christmas time only, with brandy butter.

Cover story

One of the most exciting and anticipated events in a writer's life is also one that requires almost no effort on her part. It's when her editor sends her that email with the following subject line: "Cover art attached."

In my case, the minimal effort required was when I provided a few suggestions, months ago, on the direction the artist (the wonderfully excellent Chris McGrath) might take for Children of Scarabaeus, the sequel to my debut novel, due out April 2011. In the first book, my protagonist Edie is a sheltered young woman who finds herself out of her depth. She is protected by - and in turn protects - an ex-con named Finn.

In book 2, Edie finds her footing. I suggested that she should be in a more "assertive" pose for this cover. More importantly, surely, I suggested that Finn should have a bigger gun. Voilà!

(He has two guns!)

Book covers on the shelves these days just get better and better, it seems to me. I would call many of them works of art. Thank the marketing departments of publishing houses for that, and of course the talented artists involved.

What are your favorite recent covers? How about old classics? Ever thought the book was going to be one thing because of the cover, and it turned out to be something else entirely? Or where the characters depicted were nothing like you imagined them after reading the book?

Let's eat!

We read to enter new worlds. Moving to another country, which I did last week, is like moving to another world. Even though Australia is probably the country most like America, the differences stand out (not so much for me, as I lived here most of my adult life, but my husband is having to adjust). The food alone is enough to make you think you're on another planet. There is no A1 steak sauce. There are, blessedly, no Twinkies or Ding Dongs. But there are Tim Tams and lamingtons and iced vo-vo's. Restaurants here don't serve iced tea and the waiter probably won't bring you water unless you ask for it, but you can get dry ginger instead of that sickly sweet "ginger ale", and fruit yogurt actually tastes sharp. Vanilla icecream tastes... different. Not better or worse, just different.

Last night my husband ate what he declared to be his worst ever restaurant meal (chicken parmigiana at a local bistro). My worst ever meal was some sort of flat noodle and white "gravy" and soggy green bean concoction at a Cracker Barrel in Pennsylvania. It was, in fact, supernaturally bad. Still, on the whole I got used to American food and I'm sure he'll get used to Aussie fare. Our daughter will be a Happy Little Vegemite, growing up on Milo and Nutrigrain instead of Minute Maid and Cheerios.

I like to imagine what we'll eat in the future. I don't believe for a minute we'll all be chowing down on protein shakes and vitamin pills. Humans live by their taste buds and we'll never stand for anything less than real food.'

For a bit of fun, tell me about the worst meal you ever ate. Or the most unusual. Or the most out-of-this-world. For me, nothing beats Cadbury Creme Eggs - available on both sides of the globe, but unfortunately only at Easter.

Where would you go?

Aussies call their home a land of sunburnt plains. Americans I’ve met call it the last frontier – a vast country, even newer than their own, with all the mod cons they like plus a dose of mystery in its alien vistas and ages-old peoples.

Next month I’m migrating to Australia… back to Australia. I lived in Melbourne, in the temperate south-east, from the time my dad took the family out there from Britain in the 80s, when we were teenagers and saw the whole thing as a grand adventure, until I got married five years ago and moved across the Pacific to the Old West.

It’s been an amazing year for us – my debut novel landed on bookstore shelves; we had our beautiful and long-awaited baby; my husband, an American who has lived in Tucson for 30 years, took the first step in his literary career when he signed with an agent; and now we’re setting off on an adventure of our own. Tucson has become my home over the past few years. I never quite got used to the heat, but I love the house we bought and the friends we made. Returning to Melbourne will be a major step for me as well as for my other half.

I write about far futures and distant worlds, knowing I’ll never visit those times and places. Other writers deal in creatures that don’t exist or alternate histories that never happened. The truth is, I always wanted to live in America, at least for a while, and now I have. Almost every American I meet, after a brief discussion about my accent, tells me they would love to visit Australia. What about you? Where have you lived or visited? Where would you love to visit or live, real or imagined? 

- Sara Creasy

www.saracreasy.com

Explaining the unreal

Thanks to everyone who commented. The winner of a signed copy of Song of Scarabaeus is Barbara E! Barbara, please contact me at saracreasy@gmail.com with your postal address.

As writers and readers, how do we define the difference between the science fiction and paranormal genres? Both are “unreal” (in that they are fictional) and “speculative” (in that they extrapolate from existing ideas). The paranormal by definition breaks the laws of physics, but science fiction often does too (warp speed, anyone?).

I think the difference comes in what each genre needs to explain. For example, classic vampires can’t be exposed to sunlight without terrible consequences. Readers of paranormal fiction know this fact about vampires. If the writer chooses to contradict the convention by having her vampires run around the sunny beaches of Santa Barbara, readers expect a (paranormal) explanation: that old sunlight thing is a myth, the vampire has a magic ring, or this is a tribe of new improved vampires.

On the other hand, readers of science fiction base their expectations on the natural world. If a certain creature explodes into flames in sunlight, which contradicts what we know about the natural world, the writer needs to provide a (natural) explanation: the “vampire” has a medical condition such as a total lack of melanin, or, more exotically, the vamp’s unstable atoms are prone to decay when exposed to photons of a particular wavelength.

As readers we bring a stack of wonderful knowledge with us, drawn from mythology and the real world, saving the writer from having to describe and explain everything. But when a story contradicts that knowledge, often for interesting reasons of course, we want to know why!

In the paranormal stories you’ve enjoyed, did the writer deviate from standard mythology or stick with the tried and true? Could the vampires cross running water? Did the ghosts fall through the floor? Did the werewolves eat off silverware? As for science fiction, how convinced were you by the scientific explanations for events that seemed to contradict the laws of physics? Post your thoughts and I'll enter you into a draw to win a signed copy of my debut novel, Song of Scarabaeus. Contest ends Sunday 1st August at midnight and the winner will be listed at the top of this post.

- Sara Creasy