Blast From the Past

It’s been four years almost to the day since the event that inspired this piece I originally wrote for the SFWA Bulletin, back in the day, occurred. It was already old news when I finished writing it. Since then, the conversation, if we can call it that, has moved on to various squabbles, riots, brawls, puppies, ponies and dragons, as to who’s doing what in sf, who’s doing what to sf, and why this is bad and this is good and why the other folks are not only wrong, but detestable people with bad hygiene.

The one thing in this piece that may still feel current is the opening and closing metaphor: we’re on a bridge and the folks coming the other way are shouting, “Turn back! Turn back!” Perhaps it has always been this way. Perhaps, as well, it seems much more desperate because this time we’re really on the verge of a critical juncture in the way we think of science fiction, and how the rest of the world thinks of it.

I’m fond of telling my students that science fiction is more like a public park, where all are free to play, and not a private club where you have to fill out an application, or are recommended by a member in good standing, or qualify by having a minimum income, or education, or a golden ticket extruded from the wrapping of a candy bar. Perhaps I have been naïve in thinking our public park can regulate itself; that bullies and cliques would not try to exclude those they deem unworthy or unnecessary. That doesn’t bother me. I have no trouble being wrong, no trouble being naïve. I’ve been both many times and so far, I’ve survived. I believe, if I can’t say I know, that the public park is the direction we’re going, and nothing can stop it. Fight it, complain, resist, hold your breath – you can’t stop it.

Science fiction is something greater than all its constituent factions, and we can’t “take it” to one place or another we think it should go. It takes us, and the thing which is at once glorious and terrifying about science fiction is that we don’t know where it’s going next.

The Invasion of the MFAs

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say at the outset: I am not now nor have I ever been an MFA. I do, however, teach in a program that awards MFAs (among other degrees), and that some of my students (mercy upon them) will receive graduate degrees in the writing of fiction.

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There is a scene that opens Andrzej Wajda’s deeply tragic 2007 World War II film, Katyn. It’s 1939. Polish refugees fleeing the Nazi advance from the west arrive at a bridge. On the bridge already are a multitude of Polish refugees fleeing the Soviet advance from the west. Both groups meet in the middle and shout to each other, “Turn back! Turn back! They’re coming!”

Yes. It can feel like that at times.

What can feel like “that”?

Well, if you’re reading this publication, you’re probably aware of the uncertainty and tension which has become part of the science fiction world: for writers, readers, “publishing professionals” – the “community.” To push understatement to a new level of absurdity, let’s say many people in said community are not in agreement with one another – including who’s in the community and who isn’t.

Science fiction has never been a stranger to controversy. The difference between “then” (wherever you want to place that marker) and “now” (meaning, well, right this minute) is how quickly, and widely, our electronic media can disseminate those controversies – and how public they become. Not to mention how volatile.

In such an atmosphere, one would think discretion would be the favored course. And one would be wrong.

Oh, so wrong.

NO “ROSIE” PICTURE

Let me give you a “for instance.” It happened back in 2012, at Chicon 7, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Chicago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and one might assume I’d just let it go, but new stories in the media keep reminding me of this instance, so I can’t. Not completely.

I was asked to appear on a panel called “Teaching and Science Fiction,” which, along with me, consisted of teachers and “educational professionals.” 

It seemed (excepting of me) a panel fairly determined to agree on at least one major point: from their perspective, the main purpose of science fiction was to interest children in science and technology; once inspired, students, therefore, would continue their love of learning by majoring in scientific and technological fields.

The differences on the panel were more tactical than strategic. With one notable exception (which I’ll bring in later), you could easily come away with the impression that the primary (if not sole) vocation of a science fiction writer is to be a propagandist for the sciences.

Science fiction as an engine of indoctrination.

The science fiction writer as word-painter of “Rosie the Riveter” posters for bioengineering and astrophysics.

It’s not a bad thing to be. Especially when we have so many gatherers of statistics telling us through the media that we in “the States” are falling behind in science education. A lot of presumptions are there: that nations are in competition to educate; that “education” may have peculiar and particular goals that have to be met, like points on a checklist or hurdles on a track; and, less explicitly, this education is to be gained in order to achieve some sort of extra-educational rewards, like space travel, artificial intelligence, bigger (or smaller) TVs; cures for all known diseases (don’t forget the Immortality Pills); new sources of cheap energy; sustainable methods of food production . . .

These are all admirable things that I would in no way impugn or cajole.

And if we were to include that science fiction might play a role instilling within students an interest in the social sciences, and economics, and even – dare I say? – politics, I am even more inspired to make my Rosie the Gene Sequencer even rosier.

But – no.

It’s not a bad thing to be – just not the only thing.

The sole other concern voiced about what science fiction might accomplish in the classroom was that it might lure non-readers into the world of books. Again, this is a laudable goal. In no way would I ever dispute it.

I was afraid, though, the implication here was that once young readers were lured in by science fiction, these educators would quickly hand them a technical manual – that a love of reading – a love of science fiction – in and of itself wasn’t enough.

THIS CAN’T BE LOVE

I confess, I stumbled through my responses to the other panelists and the questions from the audience (and a good-sized audience it was). I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to sound like I was at war with them. I’m not. We all love science fiction. We all think science fiction should be in schools. We all think science fiction has a very important role to play in the education of all people, with as wide a definition of “people” as you can imagine.

My point, in a nutshell, however poorly expressed, was, “Why stop there?”

I bumbled my way through an explanation of what I meant, wanting to say that, as okay as it is for science fiction to inspire students to become great scientists, it isn’t wrong or counter-productive to also inspire kids to simply love science fiction.

Or to become science fiction writers – hell, to become writers.

And thinkers.

And informed do-ers who, in any occupation, can look at the world the way science fiction writers do: taking a long, critical gaze at our reality and saying, “This isn’t the only way it can be.”

No limitations.

Granted, in some ways I’m coming from the other side of the equation: I teach science fiction writing. They’re teaching English, or reading, or “communications,” or maybe social studies, or even “literature.” They deal with the product after it’s been processed and packaged. I’m teaching students how to make the product.

Put another way, I knew the hamburger when it was still a cow.

As such, I try not to direct my students to any particular goal beyond the creation of interesting, compelling, real stories. It’s their job to figure out the direction of science fiction. They’re who the future belongs to.

Science fiction started out as one thing, then comes Hugo Gernsback. It became something else after John W. Campbell, Jr. enters the scene. Then a Theodore Sturgeon comes along, or a Robert Sheckley, or a Hal Clement, or an Ursula K. Le Guin, or an Octavia Butler, or a Ted Chiang, and so on. Once they have arrived, science fiction isn’t what it was before. It may contain what it was, but it’s also something more.

And this, apparently, is where we get into trouble.

A SENSE OF “NO WONDER”

Someone on the panel, in regard to finding new books that would inspire students to invent jet-packs and Immortality Pills, bemoaned the current state of science fiction and insisted that the “sense of wonder” was gone. Where were the books that would do for the current generation what the books of her generation did for them?

Science fiction was all “negative” and “depressing,” she said. Why can’t science fiction writers do something more “positive” and “uplifting”?

Okay – you all know the quick answer to that one: because science fiction writers, like any artists, have to work with the world they inhabit. You may have noticed a dearth of “positive” or “uplifting” news – not an absence, but a definite shortage. Insisting on optimistic science fiction is an admirable goal, but in the current circumstances it’s somewhat like asking the inheritor of a dungheap not only to clean up the mess, but to smile while doing so.

So, in response to this teacher’s appeal, I tried to describe a story I have my students read: Paolo Bacigalupi’s “Pump Six.” It’s about the breakdown of things (primarily the water pumps supplying the greater Manhattan area), about living in a polluted world, where BHP endocrine disruptors are wreaking havoc on human growth and development. The protagonist is Travis Alvarez, who could be the inheritor of Campbell’s or Heinlein’s “capable man” status. He’s a high school dropout, but he knows how things work and he can learn swiftly and effectively. Unfortunately, the world is breaking down at a rate perhaps much swifter than he can learn to save it. Permit me to be a “spoiler” and tell you the last image of the story is of Travis, sitting in his kitchen, with a stack of pumping system maintenance manuals, not knowing where to begin with such an enormous problem, and the devastating consequences should he fail – he opens one of the manuals and turns to a page.

A bleak universe? Certainly. An “impossible” problem? By all means. Depressing? Negative?

No.

Travis is heroic. He is doing what heroes have always done. Will he succeed? Who knows? Travis is facing the problem squarely and won’t be thwarted.

The response from the teacher: “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Why is all this new science fiction so depressing?”

It gets better.

INVADERS AMONG US

“You know what it is?” she adds. “It’s the invasion of the MFAs.”

Okay, I don’t remember verbatim her elaboration of what she meant. To my ears it sounded like this: writers from MFA programs were coming in and spoiling the science fiction she grew up with. MFAs, with all their literary pretensions and sensibilities were making a mess of things.

That alone took me aback. What made it even more disarming was that no one in that room really challenged the assertion.

My first response was dismissive. My second response was to wonder if I was missing something. From where could such a perception arise? Was there any truth to it?

I judge my effectiveness as a teacher not by what I know but by what I readily admit I don’t know (which is a hell of a lot), so that I can pursue an answer.

Along with being a SFWAn, I’m a member of the Modern Language Association. I’m also a member of the National Council of Teachers of English. More relevantly, I belong to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs – where the MFA and Creative Programs dwell. I read their journals. I attend their conferences. If the world of creative writing is raising martial banners and rolling out siege engines to invade science fiction and take it over, they are doing so behind my back – or plotting somewhere in deep cellars (or secret faculty lounges).

Or maybe they’ve already staked out the field, like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Maybe we’re being turned into MFAs as we sleep.

I decided to check it out (the motto of the late Chicago City News Bureau: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out”).

NAMES NOT CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT

I took out a bunch of “Best of the Year” anthologies, edited by Gardner Dozois and David Hartwell. I looked through the contents of Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. I looked through the recommended reading lists of Locus magazine. I threw in a few extra names of some writers who may not be young and starting out but are far from Grandmaster status.

The list isn’t up to scientific/demographic standards, but it isn’t selectively cherry-picked either. I just tried to pick out about fifty-plus names (fifty-five, to be exact) of writers whose work has been significantly cited for its quality, and see how many of them are “invaders.”

What the hell. Why not?

Vandana Singh – an Assistant Professor of Physics.

Aliette de Bodard – software engineer.

Ken Liu – Practicing attorney and software developer.

Aliette de Bodard – software engineer.

Ken Liu – Practicing attorney and software developer.

Hannu Rajaniemi – From Finland. His Ph.D. is in String Theory. Co-founder of ThinkTank Maths, applied mathematics consultants.

Madeline Ashby – A “foresight consultant.”

Tony Ballantyne – Went to school to study math; has taught Math and Internet Technology.

Pat MacEwen – Physical Anthropologist.

Yoon Ha Lee – Master’s degree in secondary math education.

Deborah Walker – Museum curator and science journalist.

Catherine H. Shaffer – Writes for BioWorld Today and freelances science journalism in various places, including Analog.

Nikki J. North – Degree in Computer and Information Science and works as a web programmer.

Mercurio D. Rivera – Former Manhattan litigator.

Ann Leckie – Music degree. Also a Clarion grad.

Benjamin Crowell – Ph.D. in Physics from Yale. Teaches Physics at Fullerton College.

Charles Stross – Degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science.

Paolo Bacigalupi – Journalist and webmaster. Degree in East Asian Studies.

Neal Asher – Machinist, machine programmer and gardener.

David Levine – IT professional and Clarion West grad.

Oliver Morton – Science writer and editor.

Marissa Lingen – Trained in physics and mathematics; worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

Karl Schroeder – Consultant on the future of technology.

James L. Cambias – Has worked in the role-playing game industry. He has a degree in the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine from the University of Chicago.

Peter Watts – A marine mammal biologist.

Cory Doctorow – Is Cory Doctorow. Next question.

Karen Traviss – Clarion graduate. And, citing Wikipedia: “She worked as both a journalist and defense correspondent before turning her attention to writing fiction, and has also served in both the Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service.”

Alistair Reynolds – studied Physics and Astronomy at Newcastle. University, received his Ph.D. from St. Andrews University and worked as a research astronomer for the European Space Agency.

Brenda Cooper – Collaborated with Larry Niven, which, I believe, is the equivalent of the “Get Out of Jail Free” card to the anti-MFA crowd.

Liz Williams – Card reader on Brighton Pier; educational administrator in Kazakhstan.

Ted Kosmatka – Has held many jobs in northwest Indiana (and yes, that includes working in a steel mill); currently working in the gaming industry. His resume is conspicuously free of any lurking MFAs.

Elizabeth Bear – Graduated from the University of Connecticut; has taught at many workshops. Many jobs in many disciplines. No evidence of MFA hidden in closet.

Mary Robinette Kowal – Puppeteer of great repute. Held two SFWA offices, including Vice President.

Tobias Buckell – Clarion graduate. Once stated in an interview that he started taking writing seriously in college but with the added observation that this interest arose in spite of rather than in pursuit of his studies.

Catherynne M. Valente – BA in Classics; and since she is known mostly a fantasy writer, maybe she’s clear to carry as many MFAs as she desires.

Alaya Dawn Johnson – Studied East Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University; worked as a journalist and in book publishing.

Kage Baker – the late author worked in theater and in the insurance industry. I found little about her post-secondary education, but I have a hunch that if MFAs weren’t given out in Elizabethan studies, she figured she could do without one.

M. Rickert – Has worked many jobs and has attended many workshops, including John Kessel’s at Sycamore Hill, but no MFA as far as I can detect.

John Scalzi – Of the many things he may accused of, one rap you can’t pin on Mr. Scalzi is that he’s an MFA. But for those who must know, though he studied with Saul Bellow when he was a student at the University of Chicago (uh-oh), he never received his intended degree with that writing program (according to his Wikipedia bio). He was editor of the Chicago Maroon for a while and worked as a movie critic for the Fresno Bee.

Cat Sparks – No background on her degrees, but she’s an active SFWAn, attended the inaugural Clarion South workshop in Australia, has won a passel of Ditmar and Aurealis awards.

Paul Cornell – Got his start in writing doing Dr. Who tie-in work.

David Moles – Sturgeon Award winner. Has degrees from UC Santa Cruz and Oxford but can’t find what they’re in. Closet MFA? Oxford, as far as I can discover, does not award MFAs in Creative Writing.

Adam Roberts – A Senior Reader in English at London University. Not an MFA, but he has an office right down the corridor from them. Are English degrees to be in logged in with MFAs? You might try, but the English profs will fight you.

Daryl Gregory – Double major in English and Theater from the University of Illinois.

Genevieve Valentine – English degree.

Joe Pitkin – Teaches English at Clark College but “belongs to the Evolutionary Ecology Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver,” according to David Hartwell.

Carrie Vaughn – Has a Master’s Degree in English Literature and also is a grad of Odyssey Writing Workshop.

Karen Heuler – Has written across a number of genres, including “literary,” so there may be an MFA back there we don’t know about.

Nnedi Okorafor – Professor of Creative Writing, first at Chicago State University. Now Associate Professor of English at SUNY – Buffalo. MFA? Hah! No – a Ph.D.! How do we count that one?

Charlie Jane Anders – Has run the Writers with Drinks series and was an editor/contributor at io9 – too cool to even measure.

Brit Mandelo – has worked as a senior fiction editor for Strange Horizons.

Rachel Swirsky – Hey! We caught one! She went to the Iowa Writers Workshop (as did Joe Haldeman), but she also attended Clarion West.

Cat Rambo – (form her website) “I came through the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005, where I studied with Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, L. Timmel DuChamp, Connie Willis, Gordon Van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick. I’ve also got an MA in Writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where I studied with John Barth and Stephen Dixon.”

Indrapramit Das – Yes, an MFA. He is also a graduate of Clarion West and a recipient of the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship.

Lavie Tidhar – A recipient of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize given out by the European Space Agency. He is widely traveled, but I haven’t found out much of his educational background, so the book ain’t closed on his MFAnitude.

Ian Creasey – From his website: “I began writing when rock and roll stardom failed to return my calls.”

RETURN TO YOUR HOMES – NOTHING HAPPENING HERE

I’m not trying to produce overwhelming evidence for anything pro or con, up or down, in or out. But a quick list of recent, notable writers of science fiction does not turn up much to support anyone’s belief that “literary” MFA-types are taking over science fiction.

And what if they were? Is there a belief out there that all MFAs fit a certain stereotype? How do you feel about folks in academia who stereotype science fiction writers? Is the pot calling the kettle black or is turnabout fair play?

The voices of contemporary science fiction come from a diversity of places. That should be encouraging news, not a reason to fold up the tents or raise the drawbridge.

I don’t believe any of the writers mentioned above have been cited for being “depressing” or “negative” in their work. Frankly, I haven’t seen any specific names cited at all – not from any writers who are published in the more recognized journals of the field or by major publishers of science fiction.

Well, then, who is depressing and negative?

Stories and blogs have appeared on the internet with headlines like Dear Science Fiction Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic, Stop Writing Dystopian Sci-Fi – It’s Making Us All Fear Technology, and Enough With Dystopias: It’s Time For Sci-Fi Writers To Start Imagining Better Futures. These headlines have appeared, respectively, under the banners of The Smithsonian, Wired and The Huffington Post: fairly respectable places.

From the tone of those headlines, one would think every science fiction writer pecking words into their devices were starting with nihilism on their very first pages and dropping the mood from there. Who are these poor souls? Perhaps we can send them some medication.

The Smithsonian article’s only cited examples are the film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road (which makes one wonder if the author of the article knows that the novel exists) and the cable series, The Walking Dead.

The Wired article’s cited examples are two: McCarthy again, and the television series Battlestar Galactica.

The headline of the third article was repudiated by its author, Kathryn Cramer, who co-edited a number of Year’s Best SF anthologies and has written extensively about science fiction for the New York Review of Science Fiction and other journals. The examples she cites are almost entirely positive. She mentions Bacigalupi’s “Pump Six,” Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and the film adaptation of The Hunger Games as examples of dystopian science fiction, but adds that these works continue a long tradition of cautionary tales in the field and doing so admirably. The other examples she cites come from the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. The anthology is the initial venture of Project Hieroglyph, spearheaded by Neal Stephenson to promote “technological optimism” in the field. That use of “optimism” might strike one as a critique of current science fiction indulging in the opposite, but the tone of the article, and Stephenson’s own statements on Project Hieroglyph’s website, seems to indicate not so much an admonition to stop being pessimistic as an appeal to writers in the field to redirect their interests to solving the technological challenges the world faces.

So far, the principal culprits I can perceive from these criticisms are television shows and Cormac McCarthy. Even though The Road is considered, arguably, sf, McCarthy is not thought of as a science fiction writer.

He doesn’t have an MFA, either.

So, who else?

YA = MFA?

Apparently, dystopian visions have been well represented in the Young Adult section of the publishing world, a section that continues to grow at a healthy pace. If you Google search “Dystopian Science Fiction” you’ll find a significant number of titles that come up are YAs – not MFAs. It is true, though, that Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) holds and MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (among other degrees in Theater Arts and Theater and Telecommunications; Veronica Roth (the Divergent series) holds a degree from the writing program at Northwestern University; Amie Kaufman (The Starbound trilogy) has a graduate degree in Conflict Resolution; Beth Revis (Across the Universe) has a Master’s in English Literature; Scott Westerfeld (the Uglies series) took his degree in Philosophy. So, though MFAs have made their mark in the YA world, it’s no clean sweep there, either.

YA is a region that seems impervious to the influence of educators or to any part of the “science fiction community,” whatever that means at this stage. These books are bought by people who want to read them – dystopian or “negative” or not. To be less subtle, no one is holding a gun to the heads of readers and forcing them to buy these books. Quite the contrary.

Perhaps, then, the dissatisfied educators and bloggers should be addressing their protests not to the writers of science fiction, but to readers.

Let’s see how well that works.

BACK TO THE BRIDGE

I’ve spent a great deal of space and wordage over this one statement at this one admittedly minor event not because there was anything singularly outrageous about it, but because it seems part of a mosaic of doubt, questioning, admonitions, accusations, ultimatums, cris des coeur and out-and-out bloviations that have become so much a part of the discourse on science/speculative fiction. Whether the manner in which this discourse is carried on is inevitable and unavoidable is a subject for a far more comprehensive presentation than I am capable of here.

But it does return me to those refugees on that bridge in Poland in 1939. For them, the threats were real. For us, the threats may be more a matter of perception.

No one should wish to silence the voices of civil (and, to a degree, uncivil) protest, but it may be the better part of sensibility (and sensitivity) to not only listen to what’s being said, but to examine those statements carefully and make sure that in protecting our borders from the invaders we’re not also preventing the entry of our allies.

Perhaps, rather than escaping on the bridges we have, we should be building more of them – in all directions.

From the 2007 film, Katyn, directed by Andrzej Wajda.

O Fortuna!

And so ...

As of April 6, I am back among the unemployed – mostly. My teaching gigs still stand. I could use a few more now.

And I’ve also been struggling to write a post about it all. I’ve started four or five times and pitched each one.

O fortuna!

Velut luna

Statu variabilis.

The Wheel of Fortune turns.

I will not be paying off my debts as quickly as I had anticipated.

I will not have a little bit salted away for something that resembles “retirement” – whatever that is.

I will not be attending the next Leo Burnett Christmas Breakfast.

Yeah, well ... I can’t bad mouth Leo. It was a good place to work. The best pay I ever received, decent benefits, free coffee. Nice building. Nice people.

My years in the newspaper business trained my senses never to lose guard – any time, any day, you may get the word to clean out your desk.

My supervisor tried to assure me that it wouldn’t be true at the agency: copy editing would always be essential to the process. She had been at it for fifteen years.

And who was I to doubt?

The moment I lost my guard, it seems, was the moment the hammer came down.

Oh well.

Here are the good things.

I’ll have more time to write. I’ve already finished the collection of saur stories. It’s called (for now) One Big Place: the Book of Saurs. People have been waiting for this thing, and it’s done.

I can get back to work on the novel, The Va-va-va VOOM! My agent hates the title, but that’s the title I’ll keep until I have to change it.

I hope to have more time to teach – and to do a better job of it now. One of the things that most troubled me about my agency employment is that it took away from my teaching time.

I’m not knocking the ad agency, or the job – they were great. But when I did that work I knew I was doing work – a means to earning a paycheck.

When I write, I feel alive. I feel that what I’m doing and what I am are the same thing. It’s the same when I teach. I am not a person filling in a slot for which I’ll eventually be remunerated, and that slot is one that anyone with the same qualifications can fill.

One doesn’t spend a lifetime developing and/or creating a self – whatever a “self” is – just to fit in a category.

Most of us try to become a category of one.

Okay, maybe not most. And maybe it isn’t an intrinsic quality of humanity, or sentience, or intelligence, whatever those things are. But once you’ve discovered you are able to distinguish yourself – this idea of self – from the rest of the surrounding world, it’s difficult to go back. You have an identity, whether those around you recognize it or not.

I don’t want to say that there’s anything providential about my getting laid off. It’s Fortune’s wheel I’ve used to illustrate this post. Fortune, by definition, is indiscriminate. The wealthy person wakes up a pauper. The one stricken with illness is miraculously cured. The flood destroys the house next door. The piano falls just when you’re under it. It’s the way of the world. You can lose everything – in fact, you will, eventually.

But for me, not this time. Not yet.

I’ve only lost a job.

I get to keep myself. And it may not be a bad self to keep, at least for now, until Fortune’s wheel turns again.

Well Hey, It's Been Only Fifteen Months ...

I’m back.

Yes, it’s been a while.

I got a “day job.”

And I had to finish writing a novella – one that I really had to finish before I could move on to anything else.

And even with a day job, I wasn’t about to give up teaching. And teaching wasn’t about to give me up, either.

But every time I thought about writing another blog entry, I got blocked.

Seriously blocked.

There was one more entry I wanted to write, or assemble, concerning exercises I use in short story writing classes. I wanted to go back over the past twenty-five-plus years and look over the exercises, scan a few of my handouts – put it together in a comprehensive way, which meant searching through stacks and stacks of old papers.

A lot of work – but not a lot of time. And I kept telling myself that I needed to finish that last piece of the puzzle and then I could move on.

But I couldn’t finish that last puzzle piece.

It’s taken me until now to get past it. I’ll write about exercises – later.

For now, I just want to get back.

Yes, I have a “day job” – at big advertising agency, one of the biggest and most prestigious agencies in the world. And a place that even has a kind of philosophy – one that I can even relate to and sort of believe in.

But it’s been a strange, awkward transition for me. Partly because I feel like an interloper, walking into a world I don’t want to throw off-balance by my presence.

In one respect, I came in highly knowledgeable. In another, I am dumber than dirt.

Writers are usually people who can feel two different ways about things simultaneously, if not more ways. That’s how we can work out conflicts in stories. We play chess from both sides of the board.

So I could feel at once like I had superpowers (though I couldn’t use them without betraying myself) and like I was a complete incompetent, out of my league and out of my depth. At some point, I believed, I would be discovered (either for incompetency or for possessing superpowers) and summarily dismissed.

In the mornings, I would sit in a little fast food place on the first floor of the building where I work – for an hour before starting time. I would order a small coffee and write. I’d write in my legal pad, in my spiral-bound notebook, until both were filled. I wrote every scene I thought I needed for my novella, many of which were cut or altered by the “final” edit (I know I’ll probably edit more at some point). I wrote and wrote and wrote. On Saturdays I typed up what I’d written in longhand.

I hadn’t written so much in longhand in ages – much of it crap, but it felt very different to write in longhand again, crap or otherwise.

Except for those days when I needed the time to read and comment upon student assignments, I remained devoted to finishing the novella in a very disciplined way. And for those months, between eight and nine in the morning, I became something of a fixture in that fast food place.

That was my superpower – not that I was writing anything good, but that I was writing, period.

Eventually, my energies shifted from writing longhand to revising my printed-out pages – turning a mess of papers into a manuscript of about 180 pages, then paring it down about thirty pages to something that resembled a novella.

In a new job, in a new world, it’s important to find some sort of “center” for yourself – something that helps define you when it seems that everything else seems to be trying to define you in a score of alien ways.

I’m supposed to be a copy editor, whatever that is, for a good part of the week.

When I’m not doing that, whatever it is, I’m supposed to be a teacher – whatever that is. And I read a lot of work in that capacity as well as reading a lot more work for workshops, writers’ group and the like.

It’s easy to forget what got you started in this direction in the first place.

I hope I’ve remembered it now. Because even when you’re trudging at a death march pace through a scene you can’t see an end to, it feels like there’s nowhere else you’d rather be; nothing else you’d rather be doing, no one else you want to be.

More about this later.

Writing Short Stories -- Accumulated Nonsense from 23 (Going on 24) Years of "Teaching": Appendix Appendicitis 2

Took me long enough, didn't it? This is what happens when I conceive of making a simple list of stories I've used in class with a brief explanation of why. Most of the time, I don't know why, not consciously. And the answers aren't always simple.

I have one more appendix to add to my notes on short story writing. May I complete it before I mark my twenty-fifth year of teaching, or pass into oblivion.

A Long Reading List of Short Stories

Below is a list of stories I’ve assigned to my Short Story Writing students over the years. It may not be complete but it’s as close as I will ever get without digging through boxes and crates (yes, I do have boxes; crates may be a slight exaggeration). It constitutes my unofficial “anthology” of short stories, if ever I were to put together a textbook for my class. I never used a textbook , because I never found one that contained everything I wanted. I keep running into the problem that most collections of short fiction are geared for literature classes. I would like to see more anthologies designed for use in writing classes (publishers: get in touch with me; I’m available).

Certain stories I’ve used over and over again. Others I have tried once and promptly abandoned. It’s difficult to know how a particular class will respond to a particular story. Every class reads the same story differently, just as every individual reads the same story differently. In one class I might have great success with Nabokov’s “A Guide to Berlin”; in another class it shoots right over the students’ heads. You make your picks and you take your chances.

The stories reflect my own tastes more than they reflect any notion of choosing “the best” or “the greatest.” That’s for literature classes. In my writing classes I’m more interested in what’s being done story-tellingwise and how that may have been accomplished. Of course, that doesn’t preclude a story being “great,” which a significant number of these stories happen to be (and not necessarily the ones you might first suppose).

When I started listing these stories, I had no idea how many there were. Twenty-four years will do that.

In no particular order:

“Araby” by James Joyce

I’ve been using this one for ages. If you haven’t read “Araby” you haven’t taken my class. The quintessential “epiphany” story, which serves as a decent model for what can be done with a story based on “personal experience,” real or imagined. Sometimes I say it’s the greatest story ever written; other times I say I haven’t the slightest idea why it’s earned its reputation. But I keep reading it and I keep finding new reasons to admire it.

“A Dill Pickle” by Katherine Mansfield

This may be my second most often assigned story. I love that all takes place in one scene, in a little tea room, between two people – although much is touched upon within those constraints. I admire its economy and its mastery of point of view.  I am also amazed at how differently students will interpret the characters in this story (and so validly)

“Duel” by Richard Matheson

I’ve used this story because the TV movie made from it is so well known. I emphasize the economy and precision of Matheson’s storytelling. We also look at the opening sentence: it’s apparent simplicity but it’s subtle drawing of the reader into the action of the story.

“In the Late Cretaceous” by Connie Willis

I use this one because it’s so funny and because of the way she draws the parallels between the dinosaurs demise and the modern university, as well as keeping the multiple threads of her characters in play without dragging down the story’s pace.

“Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth

A great “problem” story. Editorial comment: you have to go back to the short fiction to see how great a writer Roth can be.

“The Last Mohican” by Bernard Malamud

Malamud’s “doppelganger” story. It’s a good example of a story putting a character to a very personal test by pairing him with a character that subtly reflects a part of his own unacknowledged, darker nature.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

Absolutely essential to read this story. We look at the opening paragraph and see how it prepares you for every subsequent revelation of the story. The ending as well is worth many re-readings.

“Parker’s Back” by Flannery O’Connor

When I get tired of talking about how great “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is, I try to find another exemplary O’Connor story. This one isn’t perfect, but it has at its heart a great problem, which the protagonist tries to solve. His failure is brilliantly illustrated, like the tattoo itself that Parker gets.

“A Temple of the Holy Ghost” by Flannery O’Connor

See above. Along with the masterful control of point of view, its powerful climax and its serene, haunting ending.

“The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen

I read this story for years without going back to the ballad of which this turns out to be an effective and loyal retelling – a matter which adds such great resonance to Bowen’s painstaking and effective use of detail – sense of place, character, tone and mood. The heart of the story is so lightly but effectively introduced. And the ending, after multiple readings, remains chilling and disturbing in the very best way.

“A Tree of Night” by Truman Capote

One year my class night fell on Halloween. I decided to celebrate (and allow my students to celebrate) by choosing three of the creepiest stories I had ever read. This was one of them. I love stories that take place in essentially one setting – in one scene. I later tried my hand at my own “terrors of travel” story, called “The Ambiguities.” Capote, I confess, still managed the more effective job.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

My second choice for Halloween (my third was “The Demon Lover”). A profoundly scary story where essentially nothing dramatic occurs. It is all in the dialog – the sense of threat from “Mr. Friend,” of the mercilessly cool exercise of power and the thick sense of inevitability of our unfortunate protagonist’s fate.

“A Guide to Berlin” by Vladimir Nabokov

On first reading, this looks like a random selection of jottings, interesting in their individual vividness, but not particularly cohesive. With the last few sentences, you realize this story is a story, structured to hide its intent in plain sight. It’s still open to a number of interpretations, but its themes of war and time and remembrance remain powerful even nine decades after its first publication.

“The Jar” by Ray Bradbury

What’s in the jar? Imagination. It’s TV. It’s the unconscious manifest. It’s just junk collected in a jar. It’s the perfect metaphor – except you ruin it if you call it a metaphor. I’m not sure if I have a clear reason why I’ve used this story in class except that it fascinates me, and I hope it fascinates my students as well.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury

I’m adamant about stories being about people. I’m also adamant about exceptions to the rule, of which this may be one of the most notable. This story “works” in a profound way, but why? The commentaries my students provide on that question I find ceaselessly fascinating.

“The Wooing of Ariadne” by Harry Mark Petrakis

I have always loved this story for its plain narrative structure, its strong first-person voice and it’s just-breaking-the-ice conclusion grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat. And yet, in its simplicity (it’s been staged as a high school play) it leaves a depth of texture and interpretation that’s humbling for any writer who reads it. Petrakis, perhaps, is a writer’s writer. He channels all his Greek ancestors with every sentence.

“The Women Men Don’t See” by James Tiptree, Jr.

I’ll never forget the rage expressed by one of my students, a retired accountant, at discovering that this was a science fiction story only after reading almost the entire story. Of course, a careful rereading reveals that this is science fiction story from the very first sentence. Books can be written about this one story – or at least collections of essays.

“The Chaser” by John Collier

This serves as the classic example of how to do a full story in one scene, consisting mostly of a dialog between a young man looking for a love potion, and the older gentleman who sells it to him for a dollar. Within the scene, we gain, in the most economic way, what led the young man here and – inevitably – where he will go from there, and how he will return to the little apartment of the older gentleman. A masterpiece of economy, voice and structure.

“Walking Distance” by Rod Serling

Often, I’ve had students in class who weren’t familiar with short stories – but they were familiar (especially if they were “of an age”) with anthology format TV shows, like The Twilight Zone. I chose this because not only is it one of the deepest, most poignant (and slightly autobiographical) of the TV episodes, it’s also one of Serling’s best short stories as short stories (he published a few collections of prose versions of his scripted episodes).

“The Familiar” by Albert E. Cowdrey

The first story of Cowdrey’s I read, which mixes a vivid New Orleans location with mystery and magic. I used it as a example of “trusting the story” to find the “voice.”

“The Little Things” by Bridget McKenna

This is a great example of how to take a fantasy premise and write about it in the most realistic way possible. A brilliant, vivid, witty tale by a most underrated writer. I thought my students would appreciate it and I was mostly right.

“The Dead Boy at Your Window” by Bruce Holland Rogers

I love this story as an example of taking an impossible, dreamlike premise and presenting it in a mix of folk tale and dream record – but never questioning its bizarre reality. It has a strong, emotional core that is never overplayed and all the more effective for that restraint.

 “The Brown Wasps” by Loren Eiseley

Technically, this is an essay, but an essay with all the elements and qualities of a good short story.

“The Snatchers” by Jane Yolen

As they say these day: “Because Jane Yolen.” I needn’t say more, except that I was looking for a story that worked in a contemporary fashion though it evoked all the disturbing strangeness of a good folk tale.

“O Lonesome Day That Ends in Shame” by Andrew Fox

“The Secret Life of Mrs. Lewis Lockhardt” by Tom O’Neal

“The Gentleman” by Martha McPhee

“Every Day Different” by Robert J. Levy

One term, many years ago, one of my students wanted to know why I didn’t use more contemporary stories in class – what was being written now and what, logically, editors were buying. I picked this story from Redbook, I believe, along with another and a couple from The New Yorker. I can’t say I remember much from the reading of them. All of them seemed somehow incomplete, indirect, in conclusive. I suppose I should give them another chance, after almost twenty years, but so far I’ve been able to find more interesting stories to add to the reading list rather than revisit this and the others I chose that term.

The exception, at one level, is the story “Every Day Different,” which I drew from a then-current issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story shows exceptional skill as it finds a new take on an old story premise.

 “In the Balance” by Judith L. Post

From that same period of the stories cited above, I found this a solid, balanced and very human mystery tale drawn from the pages of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, which is still a good source for work of equal caliber.

“Riding the Rap” by Elmore Leonard

Also from that same above-mentioned period (my students rode me hard in those days). This appeared in the New Yorker, which appeared to signal that “popular” writer Leonard had arrived. The piece demonstrates all the qualities and strengths of a first chapter of an Elmore Leonard novel, which is exactly what it is.

“The Price” by Algis Budrys

Like “The Chaser,” a chilling story done in one scene, in one room, with four characters and a powerful ending.

“Semper Fi” by Damon Knight

“Masks” by Damon Knight

Knight published both these stories, in different places, with annotations on the right-hand page, explaining why he put this in or didn’t mention that. They may not be Knight’s best stories, but I like to show students that sometimes there is a method to the madness, and the effects they feel from reading a work of fiction have deliberate (as well as intuitive) causes.

“Two Gallants” by James Joyce

“Eveline” by James Joyce

Occasionally, I tired of using “Araby” in class, so at different times I have tried these two, which are both fine stories, though they don’t have that feel of lost innocence, regret, and kick-in-the-head-epiphany that makes “Araby” so vital.

“The Magic Man” by Charles Beaumont

I was looking for a story that evoked a sense of wonder without necessarily engaging in fantasy or speculation. Of wonder, of “magic,” and its intrinsic frailty. In other words, I was looking for an excuse to include a story by the brilliant (and overlooked) Charles Beaumont.

“The Portobello Road” by Muriel Spark

It occurs to me, as I look at the Muriel Spark stories I’ve chosen over the years, that the brilliance of Spark is often in her choice of point of view. Here’s a ghost story told by the ghost. It is not like anything you would imagine a ghost story to be, but when you reach the end it is profoundly apparent that no other point of view could have told this story so fully and so powerfully.

“Three Fairy Tales With Unhappy Endings Due to Bad Timing” by Pamela Miller

A set of three poems by my wife which are exactly what the title states they are. I gave them to students so they can see how one can re-imagine folk and fairy tales, using the basic structure of such tales to add a new twist, especially helpful for writers who have trouble applying structure to their writing – why not borrow parts or even the whole of another kind of story?

“Exchange” by Ray Bradbury

A beautiful latter-day Bradbury tale that takes place in a library. What’s not to like?

“The Distant Sound of Engines” by Algis Budrys

Budrys was a genius for many reasons, but he possessed a particular genius for telling science fiction tales without traditional science fiction trappings or settings. This story takes place completely in a hospital room, narrated by an injured truck driver. It is evocative, haunting and unmistakably science fiction.

“Henry James, This One’s for You” by Jack McDevitt

Stories often rely on the decisive actions of their protagonists. That’s certainly true of Jack’s evocation of a book editor’s anxiety. Half the readers of this story cheer the editor’s action; the other half scream bloody murder (for a reason).

“Steadfast Castle” by Michael Swanwick

A story told entirely in dialogue utilizing a simple method and effective method. More than a clever exercise in technique, content and form are beautifully matched.

“Charles” by Shirley Jackson

A recent addition. I wanted to find a Shirley Jackson story that wasn’t “The Lottery.” This story may telegraph its conclusion, especially for more sophisticated readers, but it’s still fun to study how Jackson drops all the hints that allow we readers to intuit the story’s ending long before the protagonist does.

“He Swung and He Missed” by Nelson Algren

I had a hard time choosing an Algren story for my classes. So many of them seem formless; others have a structure that seems to lead to an inevitable march toward doom – neither impression is really true, but it can be too easy to arrive at that conclusion after an initial reading. I picked this one because it’s essentially a love story, an unabashed love story, and a poignant one at that. I believe Algren is one of the unacknowledged geniuses of American letters, and I decided this one is an “accessible” introduction of both Algren’s wit and his hard edges.

“Circe” by Eudora Welty

Just tried this story recently. I was intrigued by a Welty story that didn’t take place in her native Mississippi, and a story based on myth.  I admire that Welty has chosen the point of view of a character from whose POV we rarely see, and that her narrator’s eye is as relentlessly perceptive as in the best of her better known works.

“Dalrymple Goes Wrong” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I chose this one because it has an opening that is, of its sort, absolutely perfect.

“The Forks” by J. F. Powers

I chose this one because it has an ending that is, of its sort, absolutely perfect.

“Coming to Terms” by Eileen Gunn

I liked this one because it has a mystery at its core that is never solved and that keeps the story from resolving, I believe (though I may be wrong). And yet it works. It also helps that its inspiration is the author Avram Davidson, who I consider one of finest writers of the twentieth century, and whom I suspect would appreciate this story, and even unravel its intrinsic mystery.

“The Green Glass Sea” by Ellen Klages

Started (and published) as a short story. Turned out to be the first chapter of her first novel. Is it a short story disguised as a novel chapter, or a novel chapter disguised as a short story? Either way you decide, it has a vivid austerity. Klages is an author who will always find a way to break the rules, but invisibly.

“The Prehensile Tail” by James Tate

Tate is a brilliant, surrealistic prose poet. His work often breaks every expectation a reader might have, but we still enjoy reading his crazy little tales. I like to ask my students, “How can he do that?”

“The First Year of My Life” by Muriel Spark

Another of Spark’s brilliant exercises in voice, this time by casting a baby as omniscient narrator. Just when you think you’ve pegged it as a brilliant stunt, the story gets profoundly serious. Never turn your back on Muriel Spark

“We’re the Only Colored People Here” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Another novel chapter disguised as a short story and included in anthologies, but all the parts of a short story are there. Brroks uses her skills as a poet to distill all of the work of a story into a vivid scene. I use it as an example of how poets teach us a lot when they write prose. Probably more than prose writers can teach poets when they enter into verse.

“To Da-duh, In Memoriam” by Paule Marshall

Story as memoir, or memoir as story, executed with the utmost craft.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

The ultimate example of the “unreliable narrator” and how it can be used to devastating effect.

 “Bang Bang You’re Dead” by Muriel Spark

Another splendid Spark conceit: people sitting in a room watching home movies. Each reel of film provokes a memory that helps to tell the story behind each shot in the movie. Nothing is ever as simple as it really seems.

 “And Come From Miles Around” by Connie Willis

I love this story because it’s about perceiving things and noticing things that everyone else takes for granted. It is a story about being a writer in which a writer never appears. Willis is known these days for her big-getting-bigger novels, but her brilliance is most apparent in her shorter works.

“The Cat and Mouse in Partnership” by the Brothers Grimm

I first read this Grimm fairy tale as an undergraduate and I still find it to be a near-perfect model of folktale as story. “And that is the way of the world.”

“Never Meet Again” by Algis Budrys

I use this one because it’s one of my favorite “parallel universe” stories. You can count on Budrys to find the deeper human dimension to almost any science fictional concept.

“The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield

This story so splendidly models and balances all the traditional elements of a short story, it would be shame not to use it in a writing class. A lit class would after all sorts of perceived symbolism here, but the power of the story is in its perfect plain-ness. It is completely out in the open and brilliant.

 “To Build a Fire” by Jack London

I’ve used this classic story to illustrate how a short story can resolve itself without the protagonist’s success. After all these years it remains a chilling (pun intended) finale.

“The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant” by Jeffrey Ford

It’s so difficult to find stories that accurately depict the life and activity of a writer, I grabbed this one the moment it was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. It accomplishes the first goal, and neatly illuminates the nature of fiction by the end of the story.

“My First Time” by Drazen Bell (Gregory Bell, former student)

Greg Bell attended the first short story class I ever taught, so of course I wanted to include his story in my class when it was published. It effectively camouflages its structure in a breezy narration, focuses on the most mundane of matters and defies you to find it uninteresting.

“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin

“Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly

I paired these stories in my Science Fiction Writing Workshop and they worked so successfully together, I figured I’d try them in my short story class. The pair demonstrate how literature is in a conversation with itself. The Godwin story illustrates an effective strategy for manipulating a reader’s perceptions of what constitutes the “cold equations” of the universe. The Kelly story addresses our own sense of identity and uniqueness: the “equations” aren’t cold, but we can be.

“The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber

I went to Thurber because I wanted more humor in the stories we read in class. The oddest thing we discovered is that humor often doesn’t survive scrutiny. With Thurber, humor is most often a product of voice and though both these stories have major flaws if we look at them structurally, they are still great fun to read.

“The Riddle” by Walter De La Mare

This is one of the oddest stories I’ve used in a class and one of the oddest I’ve ever read, period. It breaks several of the rules that a class like mine tries to outline, but either in spite of or because of its rule-breaking, it creates a powerfully disturbing atmosphere that never lets go. Never.

“The Novella Race” by Pamela Sargent

A funny story treating the literalized metaphor of competition among writers. What if the writing of novellas was an established Olympic event? Years before NaNoWriMo made this sort of thing less metaphorical.

“The Goldin Boys” by Joseph Epstein

“The Count and the Princess” by Joseph Epstein

I wanted to find stories that took place in recognizable Chicago neighborhoods and address some real problems faced by people growing up  in a world that might be familiar to some of my students. Epstein taught Freshman Writing for many years, and his concerns for clarity and precision are joined with a profound desire to find dignity in every little action and gesture.

“Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland” by Carson McCullers

I wanted to find a McCullers story that a.) did not take place in the South, b.) was funny and c.) had that odd kind of ambiguous reversal that marks so many of her works. So much depends upon a dog walking backwards, sometimes.

“The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges

“Everything and Nothing” by Jorge Luis Borges

“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges

There is no way that I can describe the genius of Borges in a few sentences. I won’t even try. Why I try to introduce Borges to my classes is that I want to show them that you can write about the most metaphysical of subjects (reality and the nature of identity) through the simple specificity of places and people

“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi

Because it begins so deceptively simple and it ends so powerfully. This is the story I point to when I want to show aspiring writers who and what they’re competing with. Novelists will be relieved to know that Bacigalupi is best in the shorter form. Don’t get me wrong: his novels are great. But his stories are masterpieces, “Pump Six” most of all.

“Kirinyaga” by Mike Resnick

Resnick’s skills as a storyteller are apparent throughout this story, but the main reason I picked it for my short story class (as well as for my science fiction writing class) is that his narrator, who is also his protagonist, is an intelligent, likeable, sly and memorable character who is also justifying his performaning an act most readers will find abominable. I ask my students, “How do you get away with that?” “Do you ‘get away’ with that? And why?"

 “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler

Science fiction fans are disappointed when this story is chosen over Butler’s “Blood Child” for selection in major anthologies. I’m not. Every sentence sizzles with anger and frustration, and yet the story is anything but despairing. She does a number of very daring things for a short story author to attempt. Contemporary readers will think the science-fictional “concept” here is the devastating virus and the post-apocalyptic landscape in which Butler’s story takes place. What’s truly “sfnal” here is that Butler’s story “about” language is a meditation upon language and questions its boundaries in ways that make more allegedly sophisticated works appear anemic and superficial in comparison.

 “And Now the News” by Theodore Sturgeon

I can pick a dozen Sturgeon stories to use in a writing class, for a dozen different reasons. But I believe the one common element you would find within the diversity of his ideas, structures and characters is this: voice. His narrators are always in control of the story, and always directly address you, as if you were sitting across the table from them, in a café or dining room. This one, which addresses some aspects of suburban life seemed appropriate in a class that I teach at several suburban campuses. It still delivers a powerful kick at the end.