dangit

The irritating thing about having finished "Kingspeaker" is, now that I've done so, I think I might be wrong about what story it is. Originally it was supposed to be one of a set I'd love to publish as a collection someday, under the title Blood and Flowers. In shorthand terms (that won't spoil the stories), I have the GR, FW, and BG stories for that set done, and this was supposed to be the GT story, which would give me one hemisphere of the set.

But then I finished it, and I thought maybe it ought to be the GR story. Which would be irritating, since I already have a GR story, but that one isn't great, so I wouldn't mind replacing it (except that I still only have three of the eight, then). The more I think about it, though, the less I'm sure that works. Maybe it isn't a Blood and Flowers story at all. Which would be really irritating. Unfortunately, that seems more and more likely to me. (There's a thematic link to the eight, and thematically, this one doesn't seem to want to be a part of that. Mind you, it would explain why I had a hard time putting in there the thing that was supposed to be in there. It wasn't supposed to be in there at all.)

So now I have a Sahasraran story that maybe doesn't belong in Blood and Flowers -- grand. And if it isn't the GT story, then it could have been a political story instead of a military one, though I suppose a war never hurt any story's chances on the market.

But we'll let it sit for a bitsy and age before I make any radical decisions.

explanations, seen and unseen

A few days ago, I had an brief exchange with Frank Wu on the topic of explanations and how they differ between genres. The comment that started it was anent my own story in Talebones, but the part I found myself in disagreement with was a broader issue than the instance in question:

We had some interesting discussions at Radcon about science fiction and fantasy; one idea that fell out was that in science fiction, things are explained (perhaps poorly, but at least there is an attempt), and in fantasy, we just accept the hand-waving (oh, it's magic).

I'd like to expand on the thoughts I started in the comments over there.

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I think I jumped on his comment because it seems a cousin of a more pernicious doctrine, that SF is for the hardcore and fantasy is for the weak, because in fantasy you can just make shit up and wave your hands. Even if you leave aside the ridiculous amount of stuff fantasy authors sometimes have to learn just to create their worlds, even just looking at the magic alone, I disagree. You can wave your hands in fantasy (just as you can reverse the polarity and ionize the whatever in sf), but that doesn't mean what you create will be good. Fantasy has its explanations, too. The fact that they are implicit and talking to your subconscious doesn't make them any less present.