{"id":11412,"date":"2012-01-29T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-28T17:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=11412"},"modified":"2012-02-03T22:59:02","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T09:59:02","slug":"guest-post-simon-litton-june-young-discuss-their-approach-to-reading-nominating-for-the-sir-julius-vogel-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/01\/29\/guest-post-simon-litton-june-young-discuss-their-approach-to-reading-nominating-for-the-sir-julius-vogel-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Simon Litten & June Young Discuss Their Approach to Reading & Nominating for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sir Julius Vogel Awards—given by SFFANZ, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Association of New Zealand for achievement in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by New Zealanders—are currently open for nomination for works published or released in 2011.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, I featured a little about the awards and “how to nominate” here on the blog, including providing links to lists of eligible works in several of the categories, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>. And I encouraged all of you to nominate.<\/p>\n

But there are people out there, particularly\u00a0 in the SFFANZ community, who do not need any encouragement—they are committed to reading eligible works and nominating those they enjoy, or believe exemplify the genre, in order to ensure a high standard of entrants every year.<\/p>\n

Two of those dedicated readers are Simon Litten and June Young, and today I have invited them to guest post here on their personal approach to reading and nominating for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. In particular, Simon and June have focused their comments around what, in their view as longtime readers and nominaters, makes for good science fiction and fantasy genre, i.e. what they are looking for if they are going to nominate a work.<\/p>\n

So without further ado, please welcome Simon and June.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

What Makes For Good<\/em> Science Fiction and Fantasy Genre?<\/h3>\n

We are readers of the science fiction and fantasy genre, which is our main choice of literary style. We don\u2019t write fiction and have no desire to do so. We also watch it. Therefore we are end-consumers of the product and consider ourselves fans. As fans we look out for certain things about the genre \u2013 what, in our opinions, are the positives that we like in a book? For the purposes of this post, we will restrict our introspection to literary science fiction and fantasy.<\/p>\n

One of us is an avid short story reader (anything under novel length) and the other seldom reads short fiction \u2013 but we both have similar criteria. For an author new to us that we wish to consider we will attempt to seek out a stand-alone novel, and preferably one that is under 400 pages long, as this should be a good sampler of her or his writing. Neither of us skim read. We both remember what we have read, can process the information content in the writing and relate it to other information in the story. Neither of us has the inclination to reread a book: time is a significant factor, reading something new is much more fun.<\/p>\n

We expect to be entertained when reading. A book that has good solid entertainment value can be excused a few faults up to a point. In a novel we want a well imagined world with characters we can empathise if not identify with. We would have said something about \u201cin situations that don\u2019t strain the imagination\u201d and suddenly remembered that as this is science fiction and fantasy that is under discussion!\u00a0 We do expect the story to ring true. The story does not need to be factual, this is after all [science] fiction, but it does need to be internally consistent. If we wanted factual, we\u2019d be reading textbooks.<\/p>\n

We will consider trilogies after having tried a single novel, but they had better not be fat books. Most fat books from our reading experience have some sort of short-coming associated with them, whether it is general padding, too much description, too complex a plot, too many characters or too much detail about something \u2013 making them boring, meandering stories badly in need of an edit for being oversize.<\/p>\n

For short fiction the bar is a lot lower as the world-building, character development and plotting requirements are so much less. For science fiction and fantasy the story just has to be big enough to satisfactorily explore the idea.<\/p>\n

We expect the book to be worth the time and money spent. Time (or waste of) is the more important factor as we value our reading time, which is done in our spare time. In New Zealand, a mass market paperback usually costs between NZ$20 to $30. That translates as four to six regular sized latt\u00e9s or another book.<\/p>\n

Even science fiction and fantasy need a basic sort of reality. People and animals need to sleep, eat and take a break. If there is an injury, we would expect it to be mentioned again. If the injury was important enough to make it into the story in the first place then it needs to continue as a bit player for the affected character or exit gracefully. Now we don\u2019t expect full medical details, but we would expect at the minimum some complaints of minor pain or inconvenience. If there is sex, then mention of birth control or potential consequences is not an unreasonable expectation. Characters need to act within the reality of that character or situation. Writing something because it suits the plot but is out of character or does not make sense in the context of the story signals poor imagination or an over-done plot. For both of us the adage \u201cless is more\u201d is almost a truism. We don\u2019t need every scene painted to the last detail, or told how the maguffin works: we have active imaginations to fill in those bits. We believe shorter books do indicate confidence of style and storytelling ability.<\/p>\n

An upbeat story helps, though downbeat can have its place. One character should have a chance of making it, even if there are fatalities along the way. People borne into a world gone to pot regard their lives as normal and usually take enjoyment from those lives. For them the world isn\u2019t bleak, it\u2019s as it always is. \u201cBleak\u201d does not necessarily equal \u201cserious quality literature\u201d.\u00a0 A reader should want to read a book. We feel bleak stories may not have that appeal, especially for teenagers.<\/p>\n

Continuity is important. It\u2019s not just characters, it can be animals or objects they are carrying, or not carrying. Where did that “oh-so-convenient something” come from? People do get lucky, but it should not be over-used. We sometimes wonder if some writers forget they have created a society that doesn\u2019t have modern facilities.<\/p>\n

There is no need to be really clever. The standard fantasy quest is still a good story if it is well-executed. There is no need to over-dramatise an incident. It may read well at the time, but it can make the follow on scenes later on in the book very hard work in regards credibility, plausibility or believability.<\/p>\n

While writing what one knows in science fiction and fantasy can be a tad difficult \u2013 who among us has piloted a faster than light craft or can control the weather? \u2013 as readers we can spot when an author has no experience with what he or she is writing about: for example, action scenes written by couch potatoes.<\/p>\n

Correct spelling and grammar are important. The reading of a story should flow smoothly and not be interrupted by the reader having to decode typographical errors present in the text. Similarly, grammatical errors or ambiguity in a sentence forces a reader to stop, re-read and think about what the author really means. All these are distracting to the delivery of the story.<\/p>\n

For us it is the degree and relative impact of these factors that means a book can range from being merely diverting, to worthy of a nomination for an award and maybe sufficiently entertaining to getting the winning vote on the day.<\/p>\n

By: June Young and Simon Litten.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Although as a writer of more Ruben-esque style fiction and a lover of complex plots I am of course quailing before June and Simon’s exacting critique— \ud83d\ude42 —I think it is clear that they take both the genre and the nominaton process very seriously and as such, like those involved with administration of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, do both the award and New Zealand created SFF considerable service. I would like to thank both June and Simon very much for sharing their reading preferences and their process here today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards—given by SFFANZ, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Association of New Zealand for achievement in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by New Zealanders—are currently open for nomination for works published or released in 2011. On Thursday, I featured a little about the awards and “how to nominate” here on the blog, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11412"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11536,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412\/revisions\/11536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}