Atwood's Not Going to Dubai

Margaret Atwood has decided not to go to Dubai for the Emirate Airlines International Festival of Literature. The Gulf Between Us, written by Geraldine Bedell, contains mention of a gay Sheik and his English boyfriend as minor characters and has been banned in the UAE.

According to The Guardian (and you can guess how much store I put by The Guardian),

In a letter to Isobel Abulhoul, the festival's director, Atwood wrote that "as an international vice-president of Pen, an organisation concerned with the censorship of writers, I cannot be part of the festival this year".

This year? Like "I'll be specific and diplomatic, 'cause I'm Canadian and polite" or "Just wait till I'm done with this PEN thing"?

I'm surprised that so many authors agreed to go, without suspecting that something like this would happen.

Statements from other authors and the Director of English PEN here.

I do have a problem with Penguin waiting five months on this news - coughpublicitycough, but I have a bigger problem with this from The Times Online:

Sir Ranulph Fiennes said the festival organisers were merely being practical. “I think that if anybody out there wants to establish a festival of some sort, they would be rather stupid to offend the locals in any way.”

Hm, well, then don't have an "international" festival. Or set the guidelines ahead of time - "nothing may happen in your book that is punishable by UAE law in real life". The Toronto Film Festival offends locals annually. This quote, if it's real, makes the explorer sound like a spoiled fool who has never given too much thought to freedom because he's had the money to open doors. I respect him for his SAS training and charity work, but there's a difference between "not offending the locals" when they're going to help you find the next wadi, and "not offending the locals" at a festival of literature. Also, does he speak for the gay locals? Or did I miss something - is the UAE, like Iran, not home to any homosexuals?

Blog Bookkake has listed agent contacts for the authors that are attending, as well as a link to a facebook protest group. (Don't blame me for their blog name!)

Unfortunately, now I feel compelled to read "The Gulf Between Us" when it becomes available and it doesn't even look like my cup of tea.

Query Letters

Taking another stab at writing a query letter for agent submission feels about as fun as taking a stab at my own gut with a rusty knife.

Naturally, I can't just go ahead and start writing it. I must read everything anyone ever wrote on the inturwebz about query letters first.

You can join me!

Agent Query
So You Wanna (Write a Query Letter)
Nelson Literary Agency advice
The author of "The Art of Kissing" dishes query letter advice*
Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent, on how she likes her query letters
Poewar, a blog, on the QL
eHow makes it look easy.

Plus all the links to agents, etc., I have on the side over there.

So, if you would just read all those, summarize and send me a 1-page synopsis by tomorrow, that would be great, thanks.

Yeah, yeah, back to work, I know. But you can't expect me to write a query letter without breakfast. I'm sure I'll write a spectacular letter that will entrance agents and garner me huge advances... just as soon as I've had some brioche french toast and another cup of coffee.

*I don't make this stuff up, I just google it.

Don't Get Me Wrong, Some of My Best Fiction is Science!

David Barnett present a good article (with a great title) about one of my personal bete-noirs: science fiction that refuses to be labeled so.

This annoyed me when Philip K. Dick moved from the Science Fiction section to the Fiction section at the store, 'cause he had "moved into the literary cannon", as my teacher at the time said. I call foul. His work is, was, and will always be science fiction - so why does he get "elevated" to the Fiction aisle, while Harlan Ellison stays in the Science Fiction section? (Did it have more to do with the movie "Minority Report" coming out at the time?)

What puts Oryx and Crake in Fiction? Is Margaret Atwood better than Octavia Butler? Puh-leeze.

Science Fiction, or SF, gets a bad rap because of it's hokey genre associations. Mystery novels, however, don't attract the same disrespect. You can write genre mystery or literary mystery, and your work will be in the mystery aisle with no one pooh-poohing it either way. But if you happen to have a science fiction slant to your novel, then your publisher will take great pains to keep it quarantined from the Science Fiction/Fantasy section. It's just snobbery and makes me grumpy. (As I mentioned a few posts ago, Jonathan Lethem's book was SF marketed as "literary" and still crap.)

I'd be quite happy to do away with most of the categories in the bookstore starting with "Books for Her" tables and "African-American" shelves. I don't like ghettos for people or for the written word.

Spider Robinson wrote an article once delineating between what he writes, "science fiction", and that other, silly genre stuff, "sci-fi". To me, it was a meaningless distinction. (Sorry, I can't find it to post.) IMO, the cream will rise to the top no matter what you call it, and people will gravitate to whatever stories they want in the moment. You could put Anna Karenina in the Romance section and no one's gonna mistake it for The Greek Tycoon's Virgin Wife!

There is a lot of good science fiction out there - Heinlein, Willis, Butler, Robinson, Varley, Hopkinson, and Ellison are just a few. So for "mainstream" authors to write science fiction and then shirk the label does a disservice to all the great SF out there. Why are we still at the not that there's anything wrong with that stage? If, as an author, writing SF is an aberration for you, it would be much classier to say, "There's a lot of excellent science fiction out there, and I'm proud of the company my book is in".

What do you think? Does it matter to you if it's called science fiction, sci-fi, or speculative fiction? If you had to get your Murakami fix from the SF section, would you be caught dead there? What about vampire fiction - is it going to demand its own section in the basement?

Inaugural Balls... and Bats and Dolls and So Much More!

Today I received emails from two separate people on a very similar topic:

The merchandising of Barack Obama.

Not the marketing of the man (and now President) himself, but the merchandising opportunities that his likeness seems to inspire.

One was a link to a commemorative "pop-art" portrait of Obama by a company called Paint Your Life. Mind you, that link might expire 'cause the offer is only good for three days. (!) However, if you can't see the Obama art, you can look at their other "pop-art" examples and imagine just how good the Obama one looked. Art ostensibly in the style of Andy Warhol, but done by handy whore-alls. (Thank you, I'll be here all week.)

The other email notified me that Obama rubber masks - with no discernible likeness to Obama at all - are selling like hotcakes (or mochi?) in Japan.

Which all makes me wonder if I am not missing this amazing opportunity. For change. Small change. Big bucks.

What other completely unappealing products will people be willing to buy to commemorate this presidency? Oh.

But perhaps those are not really gaudy enough? Where are genuine Swarovski crystals?

The artist "14" at Gallery of the Absurd created spoof Obama & McCain dolls during the election, but maybe it's time for one of her Thomas Kinkade/Bradford Exchange spoofs. How about a White House of Light, Obama Family Commemorative 2009 Snowglobe? It would have to have 22K gold accents, real twinkling lights, and red, white and blue parade confetti in a gleaming orb with a solid mahogany-like base!

Who knows? Maybe collectibles will save the economy. You keep buying them (stimulus), you don't throw them away (thrift and ecology), and you show them to your fellow collectors (community-building).

Now, before you get mad, please know that I do have a special place in my heart for all some that is tacky, and I do love the US of A. I just have my limits.

Unfortunately. If I didn't, I could start a tidy little business right about now.