What a character!

A sad excuse for a correspondent I've been lately. First, let me pimp my friends.

Jason Sizemore, comely young editor and publisher of Apex Digest: Science Fiction and Horror, will be hosting an Apex meet and greet on Sunday, August 5th at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany, Indiana. The crowd will include Apex editorial staff, as well as authors who have or will be published in both Apex Digest and Apex Publications' upcoming anthology, Aegri Somnia. To find out more, including how to get to Destinations, click here.

Mari Adkins, assistant editor of Apex (i.e., the one who does all the work), recently guest-blogged at Mr. Sizemore's site. Go read!

Now for my own thoughts, which are scarce enough at the best of times, but which seem to desert me entirely when I sit down to write. I think what I'll preach talk about today is characterization. My friend Maria Zannini recently quoted James Gunn's observation that science fiction is about ideas, whereas most other fiction is about people. If you know a science fiction writer, you can infer the "only" before "people" in the last sentence.

But when I pick up a book to read for enjoyment, if I'm not hooked into at least one of the characters, I'll put the book down. Right now I'm soldiering through Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. Normally, I love Terry Pratchett, but last night I realized I was three-quarters of the way through the book and I really didn't care what happened to anyone in it. I'll finish it because, after all, it's Terry Pratchett, but this situation is not good. In the case of this particular novel, Pratchett has so many characters running about, and so many different plot lines spinning (the secrets of which he refuses to let me in on lest it spoil the big surprise at the end), that I've just been turning pages rather than becoming really engaged.

Good characterization engages me. I wish I could say that was a universal rule, but I've read too many highly lauded novels with poor characterization to believe it so. Many readers don't give a hang about characterization. They don't care if the protagonist suddenly does something completely stupid or totally out of character just to advance the plot. Rather, they want lots of plot points, no matter what the contortions necessary to produce them. Other readers don't give a hang about plot or characterization, as long as the novel's Grand Theme is something they feel strongly about.

For instance, I recently tried to read Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower. This was a very well-written novel with high-minded ideas about teaching the world how we should live and how we should behave to each other. But the fictional world was only dysfunctional to the extent that it didn't listen to the protagonist, who had all the answers and was, except for being too young to have her opinion given the respect it was due, completely perfect.

I don't like characters who are perfect, because I don't like people who are perfect. I don't like characters who do stupid things just to advance the plot for the same reason I don't like people who do stupid things just because they're bored and want a little action. I don't like protagonists who are weak and foolish, because it's the protagonist that the reader is supposed to identify with. Why would I want to throw my lot in with someone whose survival chances depend entirely on luck?

On the other hand, I love to read Jane Austen. I've spent the past few weeks re-reading Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Emma and Mansfield Park. Jane may not have had the most exciting plots in the world, but hers were all characters I knew, some of them too well. I admit, Mansfield Park was rough-going, given how sickly sweet and smarmy its two romantic leads were. Yet the characters were real. On the other hand, I won't pick that one up to reread again for at least another twenty five years, assuming I live so long.

Jane Austen's characters are all so finely drawn, such perfect representations of people we've all known at various times in our lives, that her worlds seem alive and rich to me. With the exception of Mansfield Park, there's almost no setting detail in any of her novels, nor much in the way of physical description of characters. With the exception of Northanger Abbey, there's very little in the way of manipulating tension through the insertion of plot points (i.e., Catherine being thwarted repeatedly by the odious Mr. Thorpe). Yet, sitting down with those novels is like settling in for a chat with an old friend.

Good characterization keeps me coming back to a novel again and again. I can't count how many times I've re-read the Nero Wolfe series; often enough that I can usually remember by chapter two whodunnit. Yet it's Nero and Archie and Fritz, and their interaction in that brownstone on West 35th Street, that make me want to go back and spend more time with them. The same for Donald Westlake's Dortmunder and Richard Stark's Parker series. I know these guys. I want to hang out with them. And it doesn't matter if we do the same thing every time we see each other, because we're friends. (At least, I hope Parker is my friend. I don't want to be his enemy.)

So I will finish Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, and make sure the next Discworld novel I pick up is a Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes story. Them's my friends.

So what do you think, Tonstant Weader? What matters to you?