Laugh, damn you, laugh at my amusing post-feminist warrior woman!

[cassiphone]

I've been asked (in a tentative, maybe kind of way) if I'm interested in being on a panel on humour and speculative fiction at an upcoming convention next year

Comments

[capnoblivious]

I'm trying to get a handle on what I consider humourous SF. These comments don't, therefore, follow necessarily from yours. :)

Obviously there's the Pratchett/Holt/Adams/Rankin/(Rayner-Roberts/Mackenzie/Haines) stuff - wacky, silly, satirical... But there's also stuff that would be counted as regular SF, but with a humorous edge.

Take Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog" - and looking at my bookshelf, someone has - where you've got a basic time-travel romance story that's told very lightly and wittily. I don't think it's a book that you'd automatically cast as "humorous SF" - but it really really is. There'd have to be buckets of other SF authors who, while not writing "funny", will write with an undercurrent of humour and irreverence and wit.

I'm inclined to put Richard Harland in this latter category, but I've only read his Morbing Vyle stuff, and I'd have to call that horror/comedy.

The other "humorous SF" point I'd make is: movies and TV. You've got movies like Army of Darkness, Men in Black, The Princess Bride - horror, SF, fantasy respectively - that aren't primarily comedies, but are gag-heavy and basically silly. In the same vein: Pirates of the Caribbean, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series), Firefly (again the series) all rely heavily on humour without actually being comedies.

I was about to say that you don't tend to see "humour" as a genre in its own right, and that's why constructions such as "SF humour" feel awkward, but it occurs - again with the TV - that the "humour" genre is pretty much defined by the TV sitcom and the sketch comedy show. But this again means that you've got a focus on the gags rather than more subtle humour.

My explorations of the romance genre led me to the belief that romance is something that can greatly add to a story - but won't necessarily carry one. I believe that humour is much the same.

(Although my Nanowrimo project is shaping up to be a romantic comedy. :) )

[cassiphone]

I have a theory on this: if an SF/fantasy/horror book (or, in the case of ASIM, a magazine) doesn't actually market itself as a comedy, or look like a comedy, but turns out to be one, people tend to get happy and excited.

If it does, though, readers (and particularly reviewers) have trouble seeing it as anything else. That is, they read it/critique it as a comedy first, and a genre piece second.

Just about every review of my books felt the need to spell out whether or not they found it funny. Some were positive reviews, some negative. But they all gave a far greater focus to the comedy aspect than the fantasy.

[capnoblivious]

Yeah, that makes sense. So, a comedy/SF (like Red Dwarf) has the focus on the gags and not the SF - despite the first few seasons at least being genuinely SFnal - whereas a SF-with-funny-bits, like, say, Buffy, gets treated seriously while having its dialogue quoted. The humour's a bonus.

So people noticed that RD really suffered when it stopped being funny, but let Buffy go on and on with no actual joy. ;)

[cassiphone]

Buffy is a great example of this sort of thing. The humour in that was great because it pushed at the walls of the genre.

I'd like to see more of this in fantasy. One of my favourite humorous writers is Anne Bishop - her work is dark and scary and at times utterly horrific, but her dialogue is just fabulous, and her characters are strange and quirky and (even the evil sadistic ones) hilariously clever.

And I put together a great panel on horror and humour at Thylacon - asking why they go so well together. I put Anne Bishop & Robert Hood and Richard Harland on it. And then I entirely missed the damn thing!

Never Chair and Programme at the same time. That way leads to broken hearts.

Favourite funny SF writers

[jack_ryder]

I've been a big fan of Robert Sheckley and John Sladek for years. Though Sheckley's probably too old school now, I do see echoes of him in Douglas Adam's work

(I'm being polite BTW - I cringe when I see Doug Adams' blurbs on Sheckley's books as they appear to me to be a kind of patronising validation - I'm sure that's just me.)

Mark Leyner (My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist)is another author who's made me laugh out loud, though he's not strictly SF - he just appropriates the tropes and language of both SF and technical writing to hilarious effect.

Re: Favourite funny SF writers

[capnoblivious]

Yeah, see, I don't like Sheckley. I've tried, but...

It's a kind of dry and forced wittiness that crumbles into overblown weird shit without any sort of payoff or resolution. He grates.

(Of course, the main problem with humour in general is that not everyone gets it.)

Re: Favourite funny SF writers

[jack_ryder]

I'll accept that his later stuff comes across as forced.

But I love "Options", and the automated city with the personality of a Jewish mother in "Mindswap".

Re: Favourite funny SF writers

[capnoblivious]

I liked about the first third of Mindswap - then it started feeling like he didn't know where he was going.

I more-or-less enjoyed The Status Civilisation, but The Galactic Lottery told me that Bob and I should part ways.

Tell me about "Options."

Re: Favourite funny SF writers

[jack_ryder]

A pilot and his robot crash on a planet that is criss-crossed with various realities. He needs a certain component (I forget what it is) to repair his spacecraft so he can get home. The rest of the novel concerns his attempt to get the needed part.

That's the basic story, but it's more of a shaggy dog story where the rest of the novel (if there actually is one) can't get started because he needs this one part to get off the planet. It's basically a comedy of frustration and a satire on the "Engineers are Genius's" trope in SF.

Another funny author I like (just remembered) is William Tenn.

(sigh, all my memories of SF are old ones...)

[cassiphone]

You said: "My explorations of the romance genre led me to the belief that romance is something that can greatly add to a story - but won't necessarily carry one. I believe that humour is much the same."

That suggests that you haven't read a truly great romance - or if you did, it was so good that you didn't realise that's what it was.

Likewise, a great comedy will trick you into thinking it's actually just a great story. Which it is.

Now go read Anansi Boys and then we can all convene back here and discuss it. :)

[capnoblivious]

Ah, but you see, I qualified what I said - "Won't necessarily..."

It's true with our little genre, too - a funky concept won't save a crap story.

I should read Anansi Boys - it's out in TP, yeah?

Actually, this comes into my biggest beef with humour in the ASIM slush pile - it's not enough to be funny, it has to be good, too.

[cassiphone]

I think just hardback - I'm reading mine from the library. :) It's great so far. I don't need the Lenny Henry audio version I was craving, though - years of his tv shows boring into my brain mean that I am actually reading it in my head with him doing all the voices!

So true about the slushpile -so many people mean a funny idea makes for a great story, which it doesn't.

On the other hand, there are quite a few people who assume funny SF/fantasy (especially in shorts) equals bad, or at least not Good. Unless it's written by Connie Willis. Like Gardner Dozois saying in his last Year's Best that he wished ASIM would move away from the light stuff in favour of the serious. Um, hello? We're called Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. If we went all dark and meaningful with a title like that, we'd look stupid! :)

[capnoblivious]

He said that? Sheesh. :)

[cassiphone]

Yep - but he also said he thought On Spec should lighten up a bit.

[capnoblivious]

:)