Interzone 211 is out and I am in it!
Posted on August 7th, 2007 by Carlos
Note: I’ve edited this entry to clarify what I meant and to remove an inflammatory comment I made.
Interzone is England’s longest-running Science Fiction publication, and this month, besides featuring Michael Moorcock, they have published my story, “Exvisible.” I couldn’t be happier: this is my second time to be published in Interzone, and both times I can’t tell you how pleased I was both with the editorial process and the final look of the publication. I really hope Interzone finds a way to make it to newsstands in the U.S.; we really need this top-notch magazine on this side of the pond.
I’ve read a few reviews of this issue and in particular of my story. I’ve gotten some nice ones — on Suite 101, Colin Harvey says of my story
“just as death has its rites enabling the survivors to cope, so will a process that is in effect a little death, and ‘Exvisible’ may well be the first story to look at the customs needed to cope with it. This is SF at its best — making the reader look at the world anew.”
and at least one unfavorable one (doesn’t say much; just says he couldn’t relate to the main character’s emotions. That’s fine.) It’s always very interesting as a writer to see these reviews and see where people’s own predilections and penchants lead them in their reading. For instance, Jonathan McCalmont says that “Exvisible” is the best story of the issue, but it is only a “good” story, not a “great” one. The reason?
… for all its clever intent, the story never quite delivers the key psychological insight or moment of drama that would take it from a merely good to a great story. Instead Hernandez plays about with an entirely superfluous romantic sub-plot and a bisexual character who exists purely as a mouthpiece for Hernandez’s views on bisexuality.
I know it’s considered declasse for authors to criticize the critics who critically criticize them, especially critics who are trying (ultimately) to compliment them, but I don’t think I can help myself here. The sentence second above could be read as saying that there is a bisexual sub-plot; there is none. There is character development of a bisexual character named Travis, and part of that development involves Travis espousing pro-bisexuality opinions, but that by itself does not constitute a subplot. Like plots, subplots need a beginning, a middle, and an end. This character development might have constituted a beginning to a romantic subplot, but nothing else happens in regards to it — because it isn’t a plot! In fact, if anything, there are hints of a future romantic sub-plot between the female surgeon Dr. Trebuchet and the main character, Juan Otero. And Travis — who hates the term bisexuality, by the way, and self-satirizingly calls himself “stray” [straight + gay] — even encourages the plain old heterosexual romantic sub-plot that, if it happens, happens well after the end of this story.
Unfortunately, it seems that McCalmont, who seems to me an interesting and smart critic from what I read on his blog, made much more of the mention of bisexuality that the text justifies. Hilarious to me how he presumes to know my opinions on bisexuality: I happen to identify as heterosexual and have a lot of very nice things to say about monogamy. The fact that I can imagine very good arguments for being bisexual does not mean I necessarily agree with them. This is right out of Interpreting Literature 101: characters’ opinions do not necessarily agree with the author’s!
Finally, he states that the character exists for no other reason than to be a mouthpiece for my opinions on bisexuality. I would humbly submit this to be patently wrong. If McCalmont hadn’t gotten hung up on the bisexuality stuff, he might have noticed that there are three major, plot-vital conversations that Travis has with Juan. Those conversations are where, in my opinion, the “key insights” of the story were delivered: especially the last one. Glad he liked the story, but I can’t help but think that, if he had correctly classified the relatively brief mention of bisexuality as character enrichment and not a subplot of sexual politics, he might have gotten more out of it.
Mr. McCalmont, if you are reading this, please understand that, just as you were not trying to insult me personally when you wrote your review, neither am I seeking to insult you. But the fact is I think that your mischaracterization of the story may very well keep people from reading it, despite some of the nice things you say about it. I certainly do not think you a “miserable, lonely git” as Jay Rayner does. I enjoyed reading your review of Interzone 211, and even agreed with some of it. :)
And as for the rest of you, what are you waiting for. Go buy Interzone 211! You can do so here.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I never said that Travis’s bisexual stuff was a plot. I think it’s a distraction. The content of what Travis said did not bother me, but the fact that he was there and spouting off on anything at all did.
I thought that your story was insanely and wonderfully ambitious. However, I also think that you failed to fully get to grips with the emotional and intellectual core of your main theme, namely the process of emotional disentanglement from a dying loved one.
In this context, I find it interesting that you chose to include Travis’ a propos nothing monologue and the embryonic romantic sub-plot. They lighten the tone and also provide a real distraction from the issue at hand. In fact, were I a cynic I’d suggest that that was one of your reasons for choosing to include them. It’s the same thing with giving away free gifts with washing powder… even if the washing powder isn’t that good you’re likely to value it because you got a beach-ball or a hat with it. In this case, the admittedly funny bisexuality stuff and the inclusion of a romantic element seem to distract and compensate for your skirting around and alluding to the Big Issues rather than getting involved in the real dramatic and emotional meat.
In fact, it’s interesting that you’d choose to harp on about my taking issue with Travis’ inclusion rather than my taking issue with your “missing” your main themes.
I felt that your story never fully got its teeth into the throat of the issues you were aiming for, instead you touched on them and skirted around alluding to interesting ideas rather than fully engaging with them. In this context I felt like Travis and the romantic sub-plot were distractions… throw-away ideas that ate up word count with little to offer in return. In fact, if we’re being honest, I suspect that you had trouble getting to the meat of the issues and therefore were happy to leave in the distractions. I don’t blame you, they were big issues.
It’s like the principle of the free gift as part of a marketing campaign. If you buy something and get stuff for free then you naturally perceive the value of the thing you bought as being higher. So here’s a story all about the process of emotional disentanglement from dying relatives that never quite gets there but hey… here’s some amusing stuff about being a bisexual and there’s a female character too.
Actually, if we’re talking obsession with bisexuality, I find it quite interesting that you’ve locked onto my negative reaction to that minor issue rather than my claim that you don’t fully get to grips with the meat of the issues that you’re aiming at. Accusing me of homophobia is another nice way of distracting people because then the issue is whether or not I hate bisexual people as opposed to whether or not my evaluation of your story was fair.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Hi Jonathan–
First, thanks for replying. I had a feeling you would :). Seriously though, I appreciate this response a great deal; as I said, I read and enjoyed your blog a great deal and think you have a lot to say about the state of SF.
People who haven’t read the story and are reading your review would find it almost impossible to see that the romantic subplot and the bisexual character as separate things, as your sentence, using an “and,” could be read as conflating the two: that’s why it’s called a conjunction :). My post was written partially to disabuse folks of that notion, should they have gotten it from reading your post.
But also, I think you may be being a little disingenuous in your comment above. In the post above, you write “I find it quite interesting that you’ve locked onto my negative reaction to that minor issue rather than my claim that you don’t fully get to grips with the meat of the issues that you’re aiming at.” But you wrote that the distracting bisexual character is one thing that keeps me from achieving those loftier insights you desired: “_Instead_ Hernandez plays about with an entirely superfluous romantic sub-plot and a bisexual character who exists purely as a mouthpiece for Hernandez’s views on bisexuality” (my emphasis). Your claim is that, if instead of writing about bisexuality I had diverted my energies toward what you thought was the key issue in the story, I might have written a better story. So perhaps you see why I felt the bisexuality issue was worth responding to?
Before I go any further, however, I want to apologize for implying that you were making a biphobic (not homophobic, by the way; very different things) comment. That was uncalled for; it was purely speculation, and I should leave the speculation to a more speculative medium. :) Seriously though, I do sincerely apologize and have removed it from the post above.
Without getting into the really bad idea of trying to justify my own story, I want to humbly submit to you that, in my plan for the story, the romantic (non)subplot and the bisexuality play a role and are not simply entertaining distractions. The story, among other things, is about relationships (or lack thereof) between people, and how much remains hidden in our interactions with one another: invisible vs. exvisible. If the story only focused on the biological relationship between a father and son who have never known each other, I think the story might end up a little thin in terms of scope and insight. Hence, Travis (friendship) and Trebuchet (romance?).
For you, ultimately, the story could have been better, even while you thought it succeeded on some levels. That’s fine and fair. I certainly didn’t mean to distract people, via accusations, of your main criticism of the story. I myself think that there’s a sort of “the key to the treasure is the treasure” insight to be found, but you do not; so be it. As I said, you seem to me a good reader and critic, and I am sorry if my comments have soured the story for you. Hope next time I write one that gives you the kind of insights you (and everyone) are looking for.
August 8th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Carlos -
That’s the thing about the internet. It has all of these great ear-burn-emulation programmes that allow you to detect someone talking about you at great distances :-)
Thanks for the information regarding what the justification was for including the romance and friendship. I’m not sure I agree with your train of thought though. I think that the bulk of the story is set up to be all about this guy’s relationship with his father. In a novel, I think that developing the other relationships would be a good idea but in a short story there’s just not enough space to frame the main relationship in that manner.
I think the story would have been better if you’d focussed more tightly on that central relationship and dug a little deeper. In that context, Travis turning up and making a droll speech about the nature of sexuality is a proper distraction. The same for the romance. You didn’t have room to put much work into either of these secondary relationships and so they feel tacked on. That was my beef with Travis. He could have been discussing Plotinus or cracking knock-knock jokes and my reaction would have been the same (even if I did enjoy what Travis had to say in and of itself).
I don’t think that the flowering of a relationship between a son and his biological father and the slow process of disentanglement that comes with death and the passage into memory is thin. In fact, I think it’s entirely to your credit that you had the balls to go after such a huge topic.