About that Castle finale...

I finally got around to watching the series finale of Castle last night, and feel the need to vent a bit.

First, let me admit that I've watched a lot of Castle over the years. But I didn't watch it out of any conviction that it's good. It wasn't. Rather, I watched it because it was simple fun. At its best, the show took a familiar formula (the police procedural), approached it with an appealing balance of drama and comedy and then let its charismatic leads (Nathan Fillion and Stana Katić) carry the show. All in all, that made for an enjoyable, if somewhat forgettable, hour long diversion.

Sure there was the ongoing story about an increasingly convoluted and opaque conspiracy, as well as the love story between Castle and Beckett, but at its heart Castle was an episodic show. And now that it's gone, I realize how few watchable episodic dramas are left on TV.

Which brings me to the finale...

As soon as it was over, my wife turned to me and said "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet."

Let me explain the reference. In 1997, an episode of The Simpsons aired called "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show." The marketing executives in charge of the network decided that Itchy & Scratchy wasn't "current enough," so they created a new character to appeal to the youth of the day. The result was Poochie, an amalgam of hackneyed '90s marketing cliches (i.e. "the Kung Fu Hippie from Gangsta City.") Unsurprisingly, everyone hated Poochie, so the network decided to kill him off.

Here's how they did it:

Over the years, "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet" has become a sort of code between the two of us for any illogical, tacked on resolution to an on-going plot. And that's exactly what we get at the end of Castle: a bizarre 30-second scene showing Castle and Beckett's domestic bliss seven years later--this after both are shot in the chest and clearly dying.

My best guess is that the season was supposed to end on a "will they/won't they survive" cliffhanger--until there wasn't a 9th season in the works anymore. So instead of shooting a new ending, or perhaps because it was no longer economically possible to do so, the show runners decided to just throw in whatever closure they could come up with on short notice.

I recognize that the producers and writers were put in an impossible situation by the network, and this was probably the best we were going to get. But it was nevertheless a deeply unsatisfying way to end an eight-year time commitment.

Turns out Poochie was an alien after all.

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of aFeather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Response to Neil Clarke

Neil Clarke recently posted an interesting and provocative piece on the state of the overall short SF/F market. His arguments are definitely worth considering, though I imagine there will be some push back (as there always is when it comes to interesting and provocative arguments).

I'm not going to argue for or against here, but rather add two linked observations about the short fiction market that, I think, help explain the situation Neil observes:


1. The rise in demand isn't for more fiction, but for more fiction markets. 

I don't have any figures to cite, so caveats about this being an unscientific observation apply. But it strikes me that nearly all the people I can think of who read short fiction magazines are either writers or aspiring writers. The rest are reviewers. Though this is, in part, a function of who I know (and I know a relatively large number of writers, aspiring writers and reviewers), it sharply contrasts with the social profile of long-form readers--few of whom have similar aspirations.

One conclusion to draw is that many people contributing to Kickstarters and buying subscriptions aren't just doing so in order to have more good stuff to read, but to increase the supply of markets that might buy their stuff, and so help them climb what Jonathan McCalmont has called "the vast aspirational ladder" of genre fiction. (And McCalmont also suggests that these new outlets are, by and large, marketing directly to this demographic.)

This is not sustainable.


2. The problem isn't that new pro-paying genre magazines are publishing lower-quality fare, but that there aren't enough of them willing to stake out new territory beyond what established magazines already do (and do well). 

As I've argued before, the pro-paying market is converging on a specific style of story--self-consciously "literary" stories where science fictional or fantastic elements function as literalized metaphors. A lot of stuff written in this style is good--and well represented in various "best of" collections and award shortlists. But it's also quite different from what sells best and is most widely read in the (much larger) long-form market.

You do see more "popular" or "commercial" short SF/F in anthologies (e.g. Rogues, which Tia is reviewing story-by-story). But anthologies like Rogues are generally populated by the already-famous. It's the magazines, by contrast, that are most open to new writers. And so you get this weird dynamic where new writers need to write certain kinds of stories to get into pro-paying magazines who depend on sales to the same writers to keep them afloat financially.  


What the Market Needs

Neil argues that the market would be healthier if there were fewer subpar markets competing for the relatively finite share of quality stories (and readers) that exist. Granted, but, equally, I'd argue that the market also needs more high-quality (and pro-paying) outlets that aren't seeking the same exact kinds of stories that everyone else seems to be. Some are doing just that--Book Smugglers Publishing, for one. But we need more--proportionately more, I think.

Among other things, the short fiction market could really use more outlets for what might variously be called "popular" or "commercial" genre fiction. Note: this isn't some reactionary, anti-elitist missive about the whatevers who are "ruining our science fiction." My tastes run toward the literary, frankly. But I don't see the overall fiction market as healthy--as is, it seems to lock out a lot of approaches to writing that are well-represented in the overall, long-form-dominated market for SF/F, while--as a consequence--restricting readership of short fiction to a relatively small segment of the overall SF/F-reading public.

New outlets that focus on the "popular" side of the market (while still publishing high-quality fare) would be a great way to bring new readers in to short fiction, and would offer something different from what Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, BCS and so forth already do very well. In that sense, they wouldn't dilute the market as much as expand it.

On the "Classics"

Been thinking about Renay's excellent column in Strange Horizons, as well as Nina Allan's equally good follow-up, and the questions they raise about the alleged centrality of science fiction "classics" to the genre as it stands today. I'm still feeling the post-SDCC buzz, so I'll keep this brief--and limited to the question of whether it's "necessary" to read the "classics." But here goes...

• Anyone who tells you that you need to read Heinlein to appreciate, understand or have a valid opinion on, say, Old Man's War is not worth listening to. However...

• Having read Heinlein's juveniles, and Starship Troopers in particular, does add context to Old Man's War, because the latter book is in direct conversation with the former. This can lead readers to draw what I think are important and interesting conclusions about Old Man's War. At the same time, it should also be noted that...

• The act of having read Starship Troopers may also funnel the reader toward certain conclusions and interpretations of Old Man's War--a process that may, as a secondary effect, lead readers away from making other, equally important connections. 

Note: I'm not trying to devalue the act of reading older SF--in fact, I do see value in it. Literature is a conversation, and one enacted over time. Stuff comes about, in part, because older stuff exists. Sometimes that older stuff is the source of inspiration; sometimes it's a sclerotic status quo in need of a good shattering. At others it forms a cultural moment or zeitgeist with causal properties beyond its constituent parts. I think this meaningful and interesting because, as fellow nerd of a feather Jemmy once said (on a very different topic), I have a historian's soul.

But it's arrogance itself to suggest that this is the only path to understanding.  

Parsing the Math in Review Scores

We give scores for our reviews. We do it because it gives the reader something tangible to hold on to, and because it's fun. But it also presents a specific problem that I often struggle with--namely, how "universal" are our scores? Is an 8/10 always an 8/10, or are some worth more than others? Do our scores reflect some universal metric that can/should be applied to all books/films/games/comics equally, or are they inherently situational?

Take this comparison of book reviews: in June 2012 I gave Haruki Murakami's bloated spec/lit crossover 1Q84 a 6/10; in May 2013, I gave Doug Hulick's thrilling crime fantasy Among Thieves an 8/10. But is Among Thieves "better" than 1Q84?

 The reviews present no mystery as to which book I enjoyed more--1Q84 was, to me, a frustrating and disappointing read, whereas Among Thieves was memorable in all the ways you want genre fiction to be. I tell anyone who will listen to avoid wasting their time on 1Q84, while I frequently evangelize Among Thieves to those looking for quality fantasy.

At the same time, these books have fundamentally different ambitions. 1Q84 wants to be high-art, and despite its flaws, does achieve that from time to time. Among Thieves, by contrast, is aimed squarely at your entertainment sensors. I see a lot of value in that--I read a lot of entertainment fiction, and enjoy it when it does its job well. And the score I gave Among Thieves reflects the fact that it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish to a very high degree.   

1Q84, simply put, does not. In fact, if I were to review the book again, I'd be inclined to drop the score down to a 5/10. So yes, 8/10 does still trump 6/10--regardless of situational differences. In other words, I'm still picking Among Thieves over 1Q84.

But what happens if I have to pick between a literary fiction 8/10 and an entertainment fiction 8/10?

Let's throw Marcel Theroux's horror/spec/literary/mystery mashup Strange Bodies into the mix. In March 2014, I gave it an 8/10--just like Among Thieves! Yet while Strange Bodies is also qute entertaining, Theroux's ambitions are primarily literary. The crucial difference with 1Q84, of course, is that Strange Bodies accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. But is this 8/10 the same as the other?

In a word, no. Doug Hulick has written an immensely likable novel, but it simply isn't trying to accomplish the same things as Strange Bodies. Hulick's prose is strong, but Theroux's is poetic. And while Among Thieves is expertly plotted, Strange Bodies explores new territory for plotting. In the end, it's a bit like comparing a very nice apartment building to Calatrava's Turning Torso.

That's not a snooty dig at fantasy or other forms of entertainment-first literature. I really like Among Thieves, and suggest you go read it if you haven't already (especially now that the second volume is out). And I don't think literature has to have high-art ambitions to be successful or "good." In fact, I think Among Thieves and Strange Bodies are equally successful at what achieving what they set out to achieve, hence the identical scores. Besides, the Turning Torso is pretty cool to look at, but would you really want to live in it? I'd probably prefer the little blue one next to it. 

I guess what this all goes to show is that the scores we give do not reflect universality or situationality, per se, but rather a compromise between them. An 8/10 is an 8/10 until it's more or less than the other one. And I've come to terms with that.