Author: Simone Page 3 of 5

Simone Heller is a life-long traveller of the oceans of speculative fiction. She lost her heart on many a world and found it again, pounding in exitement, when she set course to a new destination.

When you look into the abyss …

By Simone

On August 5, 2017

In Translating

There is one question I really dread when I talk about my job as a literary translator: “Of the works you translated, what would you recommend?”

First of all, I usually don’t get to choose. Translating is my day job, and as much as I love it, it has to be well-paid work. Um, as well-paid as it gets when you’re at the bottom of the publishing industry’s food-chain. So I can’t be picky. Also, as long as it’s genre, I get paid roughly the same, whether it’s a super easy quick and dirty text without linguistic finesse, or a complex work testing the limits of language. So what I want is a good mixture of quality and quantity: I don’t like to get bored to death by samey, bland stuff, but I also can’t afford to spend forever and a day on a demanding text.

I got lucky a few times. Or that’s what I thought. I got to work with a few of my favorite authors – some of them I adored before getting the chance to translate them, some I discovered on a job. But then the book market happened, and there’s nothing much left to recommend anymore.

But that said, I have to admit I tend to find something to appreciate in nearly every work I translate. I look very, very closely at all those texts, by doing several drafts and chipping away at the surface until I can hope to capture the real thing. During this process, I stumble upon the annoying traits of my heroes (because I notice every over-used mannerism and every lazy phrase). But more than that, I always discover something worth reading, something charming, something working really well. I might not be thrilled in the beginning, but at the second draft, I have an idea about what the author set out to do, and I can see where they succeeded.

Whatever it is, whatever it does, I get attached. And I get sucked in in ways that are not entirely healthy.

Every line of thought, every development of plot and character, every plunge off imaginary cliffs, I have to follow. I have to incorporate the whole thing, and articulate it anew. But I can’t do it by my own rules, with my coping mechanisms, my ways. I have to do stick to whatever works for somebody else.

That’s a good thing, in an of itself. It’s what I love most in fiction: It shows me the world in a way I can’t see it myself. I learn a lot this way. But I also have to swallow things I don’t like. I have to stay on track when I’d rather run off in another direction. It gets hard when there’s not much common ground, and even harder when the text hits home due to entirely individual reasons.

I suppose that’s one reason why I write in English. German fiction is work, it’s adapting my voice to the demands of another person’s ideas. After some hours of doing this, it’s often difficult to step out of this mode again.

So in this weird, complicated relationship I develop with my translations, recommendation is a category that doesn’t fit anymore. But even after going through all of this, there are some texts I still love.

Sunday Story Time: Postcards from Natalie

By Simone

On July 30, 2017

In Books

It’s been some time since I last posted a free online story goody for Sunday aftern…ight reading. Well, at least it’s technically still Sunday around here, and I want to pick up the habit again, so here we go!

Today’s story, Postcards from Natalie by Carrie Laben, really gripped me, and I think it will stay with me for quite some time. It’s a short story about two sisters, one of which ran away from home and keeps informing the other one on her travels via postcards. Deep rifts run through the family and keep the younger sister from getting all the messages. But as they begin to sound more and more despondent, she goes to some lengths to read them.

Postcards from Natalie has been published in dark fantasy/horror magazine The Dark, so better don’t expect a cheerful story. There’s no blood and gore, though, and it’s a really beautifully crafted piece of fiction – the dread creeps upon you very slowly, and you won’t realize it punched you in the guts until it’s too late.

But then, it has some surprisingly uplifting imagery for a story about those dealt a bad hand by fate. There is a quiet strength to the ending, in how it deals with the fact that some people, especially women, just fall through the cracks and are dismissed all too easily. A haunting, intense read!

One of my favorite Murder By Death songs came to my mind: The lyrics (not the video shown here) of Hard World are eerily fitting for this story, right down to some of the images.

Small Crush: Wonder Woman

By Simone

On July 27, 2017

In Films

How can you not have a crush on Wonder Woman?
She is pure wish-fulfilling empowerment, without being debased by the male-gazey fits a Black Widow (and almost every other woman who ever wore a hero’s costume) has to suffer. If you can’t see that, and if you can’t understand how this is able to change the way a woman perceives herself in the world, you probably never struggled with the kind of roles stories had to offer, the kind of dreams you had access to.

It could have gone wrong in so many ways. Diana was destined to be born sexy yesterday. But lo and behold, every time the dreaded “oooh, so this is what a kiss feels like” scene was about to come up, Wonder Woman veered off into another direction. The whole romance was handled very thoughtfully.

Same goes for the camaraderie. My first love in fiction was epic fantasy, so I have this soft spot for ragtag, diverse groups of adventurers going on a quest. I liked Diana’s companions. And the scene when they free a Flemish village is pure joy for many reasons.

Wonder Woman movie release poster What I enjoyed most, though, was the movie’s beginning at Themyscira, showing a whole island of women at all levels of society. I could have watched this forever. Actually, I was able to watch it for quite some time, because Wonder Woman starts out slow-paced. Which would have been perfect, hadn’t the rest of the film been totally detached from these scenes. I felt there should have been some reconnection later on, anything to justify the time we spent with that awesome Amazon action.

(Talking about action: Why, oh why, do we still have to put a woman who’s all legs anyway in high heeled boots in 2017? No amazon worth her tiara would ever wear high heels to fight, when it’s all about balance and firm stance.)

The old superhero movie malady of too much thrashing and bashing also raises its ugly head in the finale. It looks good, but doesn’t show anything beyond that, especially in super slowmo and going on forever because the big bossfight has to be epic.

These issues with pacing and focussing are nitpicks, though, and compared to most superhero movies I have seen, Wonder Woman has a strong plot. But it often hinges on the assumption that women can’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. Diana does, astonishment arises, and she wins the day. The story depends on the element of surprise, on the outrage and innovation of a physically overpowering woman. I wonder how Wonder Woman’s plot will develop when this crutch falls away, when she’s accepted as what she is.

We’re not there yet. But Wonder Woman is a beginning, and I’m impatient. With heroines like Diana, we’ll get there.

Aestivation is serious business!

By Simone

On July 22, 2017

In Writing

This blog went into unannounced aestivation and might have slept away a few summer weeks, but me, I was far from lazy.

The Narrows, Zion National Park

I visited some places that spoke to my storyteller’s heart: I was in the USA for the first time and went to the Southwest and all the canyon National Parks. I have dreamt of seeing them for a long time. I used to imagine all those people leaving Europe and looking for some place new; how they came upon harsh lands and geological wonders that simply didn’t exist over here. And now I did, too.

I came for the sublime landscapes and the vastness, for the stars and the red earth, and I was not disappointed.

I also came for the writing lessons of Taos Toolbox, taught by Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress, with guest lectures from George R.R. Martin, Steven Gould and E.M. Tippets, and I wasn’t disappointed either.

I had two incredibly intense weeks of critiquing and being critiqued, with classes focused on some of the problems I always struggle with when plotting or constructing scenes and fleshing out characters. It was all about craft and business, and amidst all this heavy lifting GRRM dashed in upon us in his purple Tesla and told us to be artists.

I felt very welcome even though I was the only ESL writer in the group (although ESL speaker tends to be the real problem for me). The accumulated teaching experience of the Toolboxe’s lecturers really shows, and what you take home is a whole new range of methods and approaches, and precious, precious knowledge. I’ll sure need some time to work through it all and apply it, but I already feel the workshop’s impact in the way I look at stories.

I met fabulous new writer friends and didn’t get to know most of them half as well as I’d have liked to, because I was busy writing/critiquing until one or two in the morning nearly every day. We read an insane amount of material during these two weeks, and got tons of advice and guidance.

So I feel I could use a few days off now, but no rest for the wicked. I’ve already dived into the leftovers of my recent translation, and I’m editing a super funny LEGO encyclopaedia for my favourite licensing client.

I can’t wait to write new stories based on what I learned at Taos Toolbox. But first, some rewriting of half-finished stuff is in order. Did anyone mention aestivation? Not for me, obviously.

Trickster Syndrome

By Simone

On May 19, 2017

In Writing

Like many creative people I know, I suffer from a severe case of Impostor Syndrome. No matter my achievements or my experience in my field of work, I always feel like I just tricked everyone into believing I’m performing okayish. But deep inside, I know I’m fake, and sooner or later, it will show. If you just look close enough, you’ll see it.

I feel I’m quite lucky to be able to earn my money with things I like more often than not, and sometimes even with things I love. That might be fueling my problem, because as I told earlier, I was raised catholic, and like every good ex-catholic, I constantly ask myself: What have I done to earn anything at all? When will I fall for having been so lucky?

So I’m proceeding with my words, pretending to be a translator and writer and storyteller and linguist and whatnot. I’ve done this for years, so I guess I’m quite good at it. As absurd as it sounds today that someone will jump out and triumphantly announce: We knew it! You were a fraud all along!, occasionally I still have a dream about my university entrance diploma being disallowed. (Almost 20 years later … and it wouldn’t even matter, because I’m my own boss. But my impostor nightmares don’t care.)

Recently, though, I’m observing a shift in my perspective. What if I (and all my creative impostor friends) are drawn to the arts because we are resourceful tricksters? What else is a storyteller, if not a trickster, pretending to be what she is not, shapechanging and dazzling and manipulating? All of these trickster qualities are traits you need to tell good stories: To trick the audience into believing anything. To mold your voice into different shapes and perspectives. To convince people to follow you on a trail of imaginary breadcrumbs. To trap them in your net of entertaining lies.

Tricksters are my favorite protagonists. And my favorite trickster is Coyote, with all his clever, dumb, selfish, and heroic ways. So, my favorite Coyote story is about Coyote stealing the stars*. And isn’t every star a promise of something new, a new world, a new story, a guiding light that shines in the void? It’s a very trickster-like thing to bring story into nothingness, and shaping, even disheveling reality in the act. In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde’s ultimate trickster compendium, Michael Chabon (a very talented trickster himself) says so in his foreword, about creating story out of our random endeavors …

[…] as if they mattered, as if they had a beginning, a middle, and an end. They don’t, but there is neither joy nor art nor pleasure to be made from saying so. Coyote wouldn’t waste his time on a paltry truth like that.
– Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

That’s the kind of trick I’d like to pull off, the kind of lie worth telling. And if it means suffering from insecurity because you’re pretending all the time, losing yourself in changing shapes, and your fragile lies are about to collapse, so be it. Those dark moments will pass when you steal a new set of stars and make them shine.

Impostor Syndrome is lame. It keeps you on your toes, sure, but otherwise it just makes you anxious and overly self-conscious. But I guess I could live with Trickster Syndrome. There are realities to dishevel and purposes to be found!

*Actually, there are more stories about Coyote stealing the sun or the moon, but I made the stars sound convincing, too, don’t you think …?

Small Crush: All Systems Red (Martha Wells)

By Simone

On May 11, 2017

In Books

Murderbot does what it says on the tin (although it doesn’t say ‘Murderbot’ on its tin, it says SecUnit, and Murderbot is just the not-so-ironic nom de guerre it chose for itself): It’s a bot intimidatingly apt at deploying the array of weapons at its disposal. Murderbot is also pretending to be a normal android slave, even though it has attained free will. And it’s addicted to binge-watching a cheesy show called Sanctuary Moon.

If this isn’t the stuff good stories are made of, I don’t know what is.

Martha Wells has been a staple of my reading life and a long-time favorite of mine. Somehow I had filed her mostly as a fantasy author, although her fantasy novels often include SF elements such as lost technology or steampunk contraptions. All Systems Red is fully-fledged SF, with strong characterization and a fascinating style and POV. Murderbot tells us of its own adventures, and it speaks to the part of us that is withdrawn, socially awkward and needs its alone time (a lot of it, actually).

All Systems Red is written with all the thoughtfulness and empathy of a truly modern SF tale and fits in with other feel-good SF adventures of our time – we join a diverse group of scientists on a planet survey, and they simply like each other and are nice people. And while the plot revolves around something less nice harassing Murderbot’s clients (leading to some biting commentary on capitalism, which turns its deadly side on the protagonists, too), the inner struggle of Murderbot is far more important.

It is a story about truly accepting free will in another – maybe odd – life form, with all consequences. Good intentions may not be good enough, and changing attitudes is always a struggle on both sides. I loved how these themes are tackled in All Systems Red. It comes with a solid adventure story, not too complicated, because it is a novella you can read in one sitting, and features some shiny nuggets of worldbuilding (hey, it’s Martha Wells; she’s a master worldbuilder).

All Systems Red is framed as The Murderbot Diaries 1, and I’m already waiting for the next installment like it was an unwatched episode of Sanctuary Moon.

Sunday Story Time: Home & Home

By Simone

On May 7, 2017

In Comics

In Germany, we’re having an ugly debate about cultural identity and guidelines for integration if you’re new to this country. It’s anything but harmless, and it’s not so much a debate, but mostly pre-election hokum by announcing crude theses nobody I know can truly identify with … at all.

It made me think of this comic by Jem Yoshioka. Home & Home illustrates how cultural identity is a complicated, painful, beautiful process that’s maybe never really complete. In some smaller, sneakier ways even for those of us who think our roots are not as widespread, as the world is changing around us. You could not step twice into the same river, Heraclitus said. Maybe those of us who desperately wish it was always the same river have to swim hardest and will one day wonder how they’ve ended up in such a strange place.

First person problems

By Simone

On May 5, 2017

In Writing

Some of my favorite stories and novels are told from first-person perspective, and I love to employ first person narrators myself. I’m intrigued by the instant narrative situation they create when they come along and say: sit down and listen, I’m going to tell you a story.

But they sure are special snowflakes. I struggled to make a story work with a first person narrator these days, trying to find the voice of an unruly protagonist, and a beginning that didn’t suck. While ditching dozens of approaches, I again learned a lot, so why not put it on record for future reference?

First person narration is so different from third person narration that a certain amount of readers simply doesn’t like it. It is the original, primal storytelling mode (someone experienced something and goes on to tell the tale), but in fiction, third person has become the default mode. For me, third person narration is like hitting play on the media device of your choice, while first person narration is like sitting down with a storyteller. Some people enjoy being steered and sometimes overpowered by a narrator, some people just want to see how the events come to pass without a guide. But don’t be fooled; the storyteller may be hidden behind the ‘camera’ in third person narrations, but she’s there, deciding what you get to see.

As a writer, I feel like entering no-rules-country with a first person narrator, and you don’t even have to install an unreliable narrator for that (although it’s debatable if they aren’t all unreliable per default). While in third person you seem to have a limiting frame, looking through the eyes of one person at one time, you don’t have to tell one thing after the other with a first person narrator who may know the whole story. Tenses become arbitrary, and you have to decide, decide, decide: Why put this element here and not there? Why show it at all and not do a charming summary? Anything goes, except when it doesn’t. Of course you don’t have to do anything at all in third person narration either, because there are no rules if you can pull it off. First person narrators may be a good training ground for your storytelling antennas. You’ll have to make sure to sort out what’s really important and how and when it is best presented.

The distance between first person narrator and reader is anything but zero. No one thinks of himself or herself as the “I” in a story. A story is not a pop song, like a one-size-fits-all representation of your everyday joys and worries. You experience a different perspective, and for me, first person narrators even create a greater distance: while they are undeniably present in shaping the flow of the story, they seem to vanish from the events themselves. The narrator is at the same time inside the story (unless she tells about other people’s adventures) and outside of it. When she stands beside the reader, whispering in his ear, she just can’t be completely in the thick of the things she’s describing, only an aspect of her can. So you close one kind of distance, but open up another. This distance will also show in the places where first person narration appears to be artificial (as in: whoever remembers every single word of a years-old conversation?*).

There is, of course, a trick to avoid this. Well, there’s certainly more than one, but this one is very obvious: why not put the narrator in an ongoing now moment and tell the story in present tense? No distance at all, and you’re breathlessly rushing alongside your protagonist all the time and experience everything in real time. Expect that real time creates bloated abominations of stories. And while breathless rushing is fun in action scenes, it tends to suck when it whips you through a whole novel. At the moment, only two authors who did this with grace come to my mind – remarkably using a very similar plot device: Matthew Stover in Acts of Caine (first person narrator in present tense whenever Caine’s adventures are broadcasted to an audience, but third person when he is offline), and Linda Nagata in The Red (first person and present tense all the time, and there are hints that this is a show broadcasted to an audience).

There are brilliant first person narrations out there. I’m reading one at the moment and will recommend it fervently next week. In my own story, I opted for third person in the end. But I think messing around with various first person approaches helped me find the voice I needed.

*She’s making it up, of course. She’s a storyteller, not an archivist.

Sunday Story Time: If My Dog Could Talk

By Simone

On April 30, 2017

In Books

Last time, I had a cat for you, so naturally, this week, it has to be a dog.

If My Dog Could Talk is by no means a literary masterpiece and, befitting a dog, it lacks the elegance of the cat text from last week. But I laughed. It’s so dog. We all know a pupper like this one. Or maybe even a person? I HALP

It’s part of the endless treasure trove of tumblr again – check it out!

It’s the end of the world and we love it

By Simone

On April 28, 2017

In Books, Writing

Bang, lights out, and it’s all over and done with? As if! Post-apocalyptic scenarios represent one of the classic, never-grow-old sub-genres of sf, and while the reasons why everything goes down the drain follow certain trends, as well as the kind of (non-)societies emerging afterwards, the end per se remains a solid narrative trope.

So here’s why I think we can’t resist telling stories about the fall of Man and the destruction of Earth.

Some people just like to see the world burn, a wise old butler once said, and he’s right, I guess. I for sure do. The concept is thrilling. A larger than, well, death memento mori moment. Everything we cared for, everything that mattered could be gone in an instant. Our whole style of living withers away, and with it the thin patina of civilization. That’s how those big American road trips through the end times like The Walking Dead or The Road show it.

But for me, to see the world burn is not enough. I found out that I deeply value the “post” part in my apocalyptic endeavors. That’s maybe why the recent revival of dystopias didn’t appeal to my taste. I think they’re a whole different kind of beast: Where post-apocalyptic tales mostly focus on a world remade by the forces that destroyed it, dystopias dwell on the downfall of society (often only of its lower rungs, while the upper classes thrive). If this is the way the world ends, I think I prefer the bang to the whimper. But curiosity gets the better of me more often than not.

It’s in our guts. It’s our survival instinct – devastating disasters shaped the collective consciousness of mankind, from real earthquakes and volcano eruptions to mythical endless winters and deluges. We are no cockroaches who will crawl out of radioactive zombiefied lava downpour just fine, so we better pay attention when disaster hits. The same instinct is still active today; catastrophes fascinate us: when planes crash or plagues strike, we go click.

We are compelled to ask: Who will survive? Me me me, some tiny inner MacGyver cries, and that’s how I’ll do it! And if the scope of time and destruction gets bigger, at least we want to know what will survive of us: Just silly things like the shopping list in Canticle for Leibowitz? Did we leave something eternal, something helpful for those who come after us, and will they still be human enough to appreciate it?

The resilience of Man provides the much needed positive vibes for a lot of post-apocalyptic scenarios. We want to witness that something survived. That people will hold out, some even without reverting to barbarism. By stripping away everything and looking at the remains, these stories also determine what is human … and what is not anymore. But something will emerge from the ruins, and I love to see that despite all adversities, mankind might be as hard to kill as the cockroaches in the end. The survivors will try to cling to some form of live or the other, even if they have to fight off a whole mutant roach society. Or forge peace with them.

Because maybe, we’ll be able to learn. Post-apocalyptic stories are about hubris. Since we found out that we are truly capable of destroying it all, they have served as a warning, as an exploration of the consequences of bringing about our own downfall. Sure, there are meteors, plagues and other natural disasters, but very often, apocalypse is self-induced.

There are even benefits: Nature will take a breathe. When we also realized that we’re not exactly crucial to Earth’s wellbeing, there has been a lot of interest in imagining how fast our footprints will be gone and forgotten (as in The World Without Us) and what might evolve after we’re gone (as in After Man).

It’s a whole new world! The bleakness of Earth destroyed is often set off by the prospect of a different world, a different society, free from the burden of the past. It’s a relaunch, and the world will be decluttered like your apartment after you get one of those throw-away-everything self-help books. This is a deceptively easy path to post-apocalyptic bliss: live the simple life, back to the basics, fight mutants, mildew, and meningitis …

Anyway, post-apocalyptic scenarios provide us with a fresh slate to experiment with, without dumping us on a new world or in a strange, far-off land. The whole thing is ready to be re-imagined, but relatable at the same time (you now, when the mutant roaches dig out this shiny inexplicable, inedible thing with an engraved apple). And from then on, anything can happen, and the big bang that should have been the end of it all is a starting point for something new, or at least for a compelling story, just as it should be.