The Children of the Company
To: Struggling science fiction authors
From: Ryun Patterson, Bookgasm
Re: Stop trying so hard
Hi. You don’t know me, but I’m about to save you a lot of hassle, probably save your personal life, and keep you from getting trapped in a dangerous spiral of hope, loss and most likely alcoholism.
Stop trying so hard.
You’re probably sitting there, feather quill pen at the ready, writing the defining work of your yet-to-be published career. It’s an epic, I know: equal parts WAR AND PEACE, NEUROMANCER and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’m sure it’s the best thing the publisher’s slush pile has ever seen. It doesn’t need to be this way.
Take a look at Kage Baker’s THE CHILDREN OF THE COMPANY. This is the sixth book in an ever-less-interesting series and it shows that, try as you might to bring multifaceted characters to life and make people see reality in a way they’ve never imagined it to be, all you need is One Clever Idea.
Baker’s idea, which first popped up in 1998’s IN THE GARDEN OF IDEN, is totally Clever. You see, in the far-off future, a company called Dr. Zeus starts using time travel to turn humans in the far past into nigh-immortal cyborgs, the purpose of whom is to collect data and secret away historical treasures for later “discovery” by the Company, which collects fabulous wealth in the process. That’s an awesome idea, and that book, dare I say it, is pretty damn good. It does a slick job of humanizing the subject and focusing on the emotional impact visited on such beings. It’s similar to – but not as well-written as – THE DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis. But it’s nice, simple and good.
The real genius, however, lies in what happened after that book, because Baker has Milked It for far more than I ever expected it was worth.
THE CHILDREN OF THE COMPANY is, theoretically, a look at the inner politics among the immortal servants of Dr. Zeus throughout history as they scheme and come across a hidden race of Earthly beings (fairies, if you would). In truth, it’s a collection of previously published short stories somewhat pawned off as a new work by virtue of a dull narrative wrapper. The idea of the series hasn’t much advanced since the first book; it’s just a 7-year-old idea plopped down in different times and places with a couple of flourishes inserted to make series devotees say, “Aha!” It isn’t good for newcomers to read, because it gives away a wide range of the previous books’ plot points, so it really only appeals to those who have been sucked in by the Initial Idea.
And it has been published.
In hardcover.
So throw away 99 percent of the work you’ve slaved over. Take a tiny piece of your masterwork – say, a piece with a cute protagonist or one of your especially interesting, yet mass-audience accessible ideas, and write a little book around that. It’ll be much easier to pitch, much more friendly to the “mainstream” readers waiting for the next installment of whatever tough-chick-vampire/demon/werewolf-hunter-who-happens-to-be-said-monster-or-perhaps-loves-a-member-of-said-monster-species series they happen to love and, most importantly, it will save you a lot of hassle. If you can Milk that Idea as well as I know you can, you’ll probably make decent money off the widely read (and more importantly, widely purchased) series of novels based on that one little idea (great money, even, if your Idea gets optioned by Hollywood).
Your drinking will taper off, you’ll sleep a lot better and, trust me, the people next to your booth at the Renaissance Faire won’t believe how much better
your homemade chainmail has gotten.
And you only have to write one good book.
Take care,
Ryun Patterson
P.S.: In lieu of thanks, I accept both PayPal and personal checks.
Buy it at Amazon.
I like the Company series. I have read them all. I look forward to the rest. I liked Children of the Company, although if I had not already read it, your snarky review certainly wouldn’t give me any helpful information on it.
Your review does, however, certainly reveal some unpleasant things about you.
Have you ever written a book? Or gotten it published? I think not. What a wretchedly jealous little man you are, to be sure - you managed to get in your whacks at a successful writer, the publishing industry, the movies, the people who spend money to read something you didn’t write, and all the folks who are still hoping to sell their stories: all of them, I suspect, doing things of which you are incapable. How fortunate for you that you have the bully pulpit of a self-published critical site from which to aim your malicious fireballs. How unfortunate for the rest of us that we run across it now and then.
But that is always the risk when one reads critics’ work. Caveat emptor, indeed.
Kathleen, I can’t speak for the author of this review, but as editor of BOOKGASM, I can state with certainty that being a “self-published critical site” is a good thing, because you can expect non-biased critiques, rather than planted “reviews” you’ll find on online retail sites, which can be unreliable.
If a book is good or bad, we’ll tell you, regardless of whether we paid money for it or received a review copy. And remember, it’s *one* person’s opinion. And this person admitted having liked previous books in the series, so it’s not like he has a personal vendetta against the author; his viewpoint is not borne out of maliciousness.
This is not the first negative review we’ve run, nor will it be the last. If we only ran positive reviews, we’d be doing a disservice. Even bad press is good press, because people like you can read a review like this one and say, “It still appeals to me; I’m going to read it anyway.” However, we only read things we’re interested in and match up books to our reviewers’ interests in the spirit of fairness, so chances are we’ll like it more often than not.
And you can’t have a name like BOOKGASM and not be at least a little irreverent. All that said, we welcome dissenting opinions, but malicious we are not.
[...] Larry Niven, Brenda Cooper, Mike Resnick, Kage Baker (not with a “Company” story, thankfully) and tons more. The tone ranges from rock-solid hard sci-fi to good ol’ sci-fi adventure, [...]