Star Wars on Trial
Page 14
Now, let's get something straight here at the outset. I'm not a big fan of media tie-ins and novelizations in general. I don't believe that they are a good thing for the genre, per se, and I frequently bemoan the fact that they are bought and consumed in numbers that dwarf the "real" stuff by many orders of magnitude. In short, anyone who equates Elminster with Gandalf or Merlin isn't going to rate too highly in my book. But despite all the above, I come neither to praise Star Wars novels nor to bury them. While I'd rather apply leeches under my tongue than have to read a Forgotten Realms novel, several of my friends have delved into media tie-in territory for love, not money, and I'll concede that not all of them are the utter drek they are so often characterized as being. As a reader, I've even enjoyed that guilty pleasure myself a time or two, though it's been a few years, and it is a guilty pleasure.
Still, meat loaf is meat loaf, and filet mignon is filet mignon. It's okay (and probably necessary) to eat both, but it's important that we can all tell the difference, whatever our subjective tastes. So, while we're defining our terms ... Star Wars is:
• Three good movies.
• One movie about violent teddy bears that seems much better now in retrospect.
• Two horrendously bad movies with unprecedented special effects.
• Some embarrassingly hackneyed Christmas specials (two with the aforementioned bears).
• A recent and very slick series of animated shorts much cooler than most of the above.
All told, and despite the aforementioned animated shorts, this is not a wonderful batting average when it's all laid out. That rival franchise with the same first word in its name at least had seventeen years of good television and maybe four good films before it started going south. Yet this uneven collection of celluloid tales-little more sophisticated at the outset than a 1930s Flash Gordon serial-is merely the hub of a media empire that spans comics, role-playing games, video games and approximately one hundred novels, many of which are, curiously enough, much better than their source material. Indeed, I cannot begin to count how many times a Star Wars fan apologized to me for liking The Phantom Menace, agreeing with me that the storytelling was inept, the plot ridiculous, the acting horrendous, the humor flat, the sexual politics dangerous and offensive, but shamefacedly maintaining that they liked it despite the fact that it wasn't any good. So great was their love of the enormous expanded universe of Star Wars lore that surrounded the franchise that they could love the body while admitting that the spine it hung on was flawed and rotten. It was as if, forgive me, Star Wars was in fact some vast galaxy of ancillary matter surrounding a center comprised of a vast black hole. In fact, it has been noted more than once that this greater body of continuity may be the point these days. As Neal Stephenson wrote in the New York Times June 17, 2005 issue, "These newer films don't even pretend to tell the whole story; they are akin to PowerPoint presentations that summarize the main bullet points from a much more comprehensive body of work developed by and for a geek subculture."
Geek subculture indeed. I admit to a certain geek attraction when I note the convenient timeline at the start of a particular novelization, tying all of the previous Star Wars novels together and showing me where they fall in relation to the six films. And the books come with icons on their back covers, identifying into which of the five major eras (Sith, Prequel, Classic, New Republic or NewJedi Order) the story falls. What self-respecting continuity lover wouldn't fall for that? And Star Wars comes complete with a galaxy of extemporaneous material that has built up over almost three decades! But that it ever would have come to this, where the words "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" are practically synonymous with science fiction in the minds of the general populace and both are franchises worth hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions), no one could have foreseen.
So, more power to Mr. Lucas. Why be a Scrooge and begrudge him his science fiction empire? It's all in good fun anyway, right? Yes, but:
TO BEGIN WITH, IT ISN'T REALLY SCIENCE FICTION
In his introduction to The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20" Cen tury, Harry Turtledove writes that "Written science fiction is often thought-provoking; filmed sci-fi is more often jaw-dropping. The two usually appeal to different audiences, which aficionados of the written variety sometimes forget to their peril-and frustration." This frustration Turtledove notes is why some on the literary side of the fence have taken to distinguishing between "SF" literature and "sci-fi"-their somewhat derogative term for the flood of brainless action-adventure films and television shows which use science fiction iconography as a setting or backdrop for adventure without appropriating its sophistication or meaning.
James Gunn expands on this notion in his essay "The Tinsel Screen" to say, "Printed science fiction and science fiction film seem to have little to do with each other, and there are virtually no good films that are also good science fiction. Star Wars is a simple and charming fairy tale set in scenes in which science fiction paraphernalia is lying about.... The problem with the science fiction film may be that it adds nothing to science fiction except concreteness of image-and that may be more of a drawback than an asset."
Wait a minute! Star Wars not science fiction, you say? Surely you jest. It's full of robots and spaceship battles, isn't it? What could be more science fiction than that? True enough, but from its opening moments, when the film tells us that it is set "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"-a deliberate invocation of "once upon a time"-we know right where we stand. We are in a tale of knights with sabers fighting in a battle of good versus evil. A story of princesses and dark lords, torn from the pages of Ivanhoe, The Lord of the Rings and tales of King Arthur. In fact, early in Star Wars: A New Hope there is a scene in which C-3PO, newly acquired by the Owens, calls the young Luke "sir." Our hero responds with "Luke," to which the obsequious droid responds by immediately calling him "Sir Luke." The boy responds, "Just Luke," but the allusion to courtly titles is made. It's a clever bit of business to drive home the point that this is a tale of fantasy, which is what George "I don't have to know what a parsec is" Lucas has always maintained that it is.
Okay, so Star Wars isn't true science fiction. Why is this bad? A number of reasons, including:
THE PROBLEM OF WIDER PERCEPTION
Star Wars is seen as being indicative of the science fiction genre by the majority of moviegoers. In the October 14, 2005 issue of the Times, mystery writer Ian Rankin complained at the underrated status afforded writers of crime fiction, while noting, "We don't get as raw a deal as science fiction writers. Science fiction is dealing with some of the biggest ideas-where we are going to go as a race-but for some reason it's not taken seriously." Now why do you suppose that is? Stephen Baxter, one of the top talents of the current crop of hard SF writers, sees the gulf as existing at its widest point in its most public face.
I think Fred Pohl said several times that Star Trek is really good science fiction for about 1920. And I think that's the trouble really The sophistication that you get in the best literary SF is far in advance of what you get on the average in media SE There are obviously exceptions, but on the whole, especially the stuff that's in the public's face-Star Trek, Star Wars-what the critics know about-it is just so far behind, the use of ideas and so forth. I think that's the trouble. We're all judged by that label, especially given the preponderance in the bookshops of media tie-in books and epic fantasy, and then science fiction and hard SF especially is just a tiny corner. It's difficult for them to get through the prejudice.
Getting through the prejudice. Which is a shame, because as many doors as Star Wars has opened in terms of special effects and imagination (and it has opened quite a few), it has also ushered in an era in which science fiction is seen as childish escapism and "serious" science fiction films have been extremely hard to produce. Like James Bond movies having to up the ante every time, no science fiction film could be made today on anything approaching a large budget without a prerequisite number of explosions, vehicle (car o
r spaceship) chases and fights, whether lightsaber duels or Matrixstyle kung fu. And while this has made for some wonderful popcorn cinema, I can't help but wonder what we are missing out on. Imagine for just a moment, if you will, the resulting films we might have been given had Stanley Kubrick's 2001 emerged as the benchmark against which Hollywood had set itself these past decades. If that cinematic masterpiece, and not Lucas's space opera, had inspired a sea of films with Oscar-caliber scripts and Oscar-caliber performances in the science fiction genre. What kind of a filmic landscape would we have had then? Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know.
The problem we face is that the general perception of our genre as overrun with Star Trek and Star Wars fans, and providing material only on a level with their tastes, may be a factor in keeping a larger populace from checking it out. How many of us, working professionals in this business, when asked what we do, inevitably have to endure quips about one or both of these two franchises? Wouldn't it be nice, just once, when explaining, "I work in science fiction," to have someone say, "Ah, yes, science fiction. That Samuel R. Delaney is a modern-day James Joyce, isn't he?" or "Did you know that Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout was named for Theodore Sturgeon?" Or, "You guys really have a handle on explaining to the rest of it where the whole world is heading. Thanks!" But alas, too often, it's all jokes about Spock ears and lightsabers and why don't you ever try writing a "proper book"!
Now, lest you think this is all just a bunch of sour grapes, there are some very practical, economic reasons why media tie-ins and novelizations are bad for business too.
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
"They're bad because they've killed the midlist," explains Mike Resnick, a seasoned professional who knows more about the business of writing than just about any other writer I know.
Essentially the argument is this: writers as different and as idiosyncratic as Harry Turtledove, Gene Wolfe and I were all allowed to build our advances and audiences over a period of more than a decade. But today, with the midlist totally taken over by media books, there seem to be almost no novels in the $12,500 to $45,000 range. Instead of building from $5K to $9K to $14K to $20K and so on, now you go from $6K to $40K-an enormous leap of faith that most publishers are unwilling to make-or you stay at $6K. Why take a chance that you'll earn a $27K advance when they know a Trek book or a Wookiee book will earn out with no effort on the publisher's part?
Why indeed? This has led to our current situation, a shrinking of the midlist where publishers burn through promising new authors faster than Fox turns over new television shows, and scores of deserving talent are being discarded where an earlier age would have allowed their works to grow and take root. Do not believe otherwise. This is a very real problem, resulting in a sea of broken careers, and the genre is the poorer for it.
Nor are the works of which we're being deprived the only way in which the quality of the science fiction genre is being affected. Novelizations and tie-ins have another crime to answer for, as Resnick explains, "They're bad because they teach writers bad habits. Eight hundred years of literary evolution says that the protagonist must grow and change from his experiences-but novelizations of TV series require the same familiar character not to change. And they teach writers to be lazy-why describe how a process works when you can simply say, `They stepped into the Transporter beam,' and ten million kids know what it means?"
Look, you say, I work long hours, life is tough enough, and when I come home, I want something light and fun. What does it matter if I want some turn-your-brain-off entertainment anyhow? Or, in other words ...
WHY IS BAD WRITING BAD, ANYWAY?
First of all, let's define what we mean by good writing first, shall we? I don't think we can come up with a better definition of good literature than that supplied by the inestimable Gene Wolfe, who said, "My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure." Or, as Samuel R. Delaney put it in an interview with Adam Roberts (Argosy magazine, January/February 2004), his writing is not generally intended for readers "who are not terribly interested in getting any other pleasure from a book except the one they open the first page expecting."
By contrast, when you read a novelization, not only are you getting exactly what you are expecting, you are almost certainly not getting a writer's best work. For starters, who would give away his best ideas, when he won't own the fruits of the labors? Writers save their best material for their own books, and put in the tie-ins that which they can bear to give away.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: science fiction is the genre that looks at the implications of technology on society, which, in this age of exponential technological growth, makes it the most relevant branch of literature going. We've lived through at least one singularity with the birth of the Internet, and the way this has transformed everyone's life in just a few short decades cannot be overlooked or downplayed. But this is only the start, and the close of the twenty-first century will look absolutely nothing like its inception. This hasn't ever been true in history before. The future has overtaken the present and things are only speeding up. The future exists first in imagination, then in will, then in reality, and the types of dreams we dream today will determine the world we and our children live in tomorrow. Our world is dreaming some dark dreams now. We need to dream better, as if our life depended on it. I suppose that it all comes back to meat loaf and filet mignon. If tie-in properties could be a gateway drug to the real stuff, wonderful. But if they pass in the mind of the majority for the real stuff, trouble. Because, my friends, the real stuff is important. The future is a very powerful force, if you just tap into it.
Lou Anders is an editor, author and journalist. He is the editorial director of Prometheus Books' science fiction imprint Pyr, as well as the anthologies Outside the Box (Wildside Press, 2001), Live Without a Net (Roc, 2003), Projections (MonkeyBrain, December 2004) and FutureShocks (Roc, July 2005). He served as the senior editor for Argosy Magazine's inaugural issues in 2003-04. In 2000 he served as the executive editor of Bookface.com, and before that he worked as the Los Angeles liaison for Titan Publishing Group. He is the author of The Making of Star Trek: First Contact (Titan Books, 1996), and has published over 500 articles in such magazines as Publishers Weekly, The Believer, Dreamwatch, Star Trek Monthly, Star Wars Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, Sci Fi Universe, Doctor Who Magazine, and Manga Max. His articles and stories have been translated into German, French and Greek, and have appeared online at Believermag.com, SFSite.com, RevolutionSFcom and InfinityPlus.co.uk.
THE COURTROOM
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Okay, let's break this down. Your first objection is that (gasp!) Star Wars is fantasy. Say it ain't so! Uh, moving on-
Your second objection is that Star Wars is "seen as being indicative of the science fiction genre by the majority of moviegoers." In other words, it's been really, really successful. Uh, okay: guilty as charged.
Your third objection is that it "ushered in an era in which science fiction is seen as childish escapism and `serious' science fiction films have been extremely hard to produce." Which leads me to my first question: Are you seriously trying to tell this Court that there was an era, previous to Star Wars, in which science fiction was not seen, by the wider public, as childish escapism, and "serious" science fiction films were actually easy to produce? Are you trying to say that there is not more serious-or at least attempting to be serious-SF cinema now (e.g., Donnie Darho, Primer, Solaris, The Butterfly Effect, et al) than at any time in Hollywood history? I remind you that you are under oath.
LOU ANDERS: First of all, commercial success is not a barometer of quality, and you know that, or anyway you should. More power to Dan Brown for coming up with The Da Vinci Code, but the hackneyed prose he serves up wouldn't fly in the genre next door. And if the size of your audience is an indication of talent and literary merit, then Fear Factor is gripping, psychological drama. You
will recall that I never faulted anyone his entertainment, simply bemoaned those who can't tell shit from Shakespeare and insist the one is the other.
Second, (with thanks to James Gunn):
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What year was that boring piece of crap-sorry, cinematic masterpiece (if you're really, really high)2001: A Space Odyssey released? 1968, wasn't it? So it had almost a decade to inspire filmmakers before Star Wars made its debut ... and yet, mostly it inspired clouds of suspiciously scented smoke at midnight showings. Could it be that the real problem has been failure of the "serious" science fiction types you pine for to produce something entertaining enough to capture the popular imagination? Or do you consider the real problem to be that the public's just too stupid to appreciate what you consider the Good Stuff?
LOU ANDERS: Neither. The public has no problem with distinguishing the good stuff, hence the widespread acknowledgement of the first Matrix, and the failure of the third. Or the success of The Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, quite a few critics at the time praised Jackson for providing the first trilogy that didn't disappoint as it played out, with frequent negative comparisons to The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Oddly, though, the new Star Wars trilogy reverses the trajectory of the typical trilogy in that Lucas did provide a strong finish after two unwatchable movies. If one were to line up the six Star Wars films in their numeric order, you would get an interesting bell curve. Of course, The Ewok Adventure and The Star Wars Holiday Special somewhat distort the symmetry.
Also, 2001 was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Director and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. How many science fiction films are given that respect these days?