Sorry for the post-Comic-Con reports, but I had a hard time finding a spare moment to write entries during SDCC. And I'm not so in love with my smartphone that I'm willing to compose actual material with that touch keypad.
One of the things that I love about SDCC is the small panel you attend that isn't part of the massive queue system and doesn't involve movie/tv stars, which ends up unexpectedly being one of your favorite moments of the week. For me, that session was with author China Mieville.
Mieville's works are not easily classified into a specific genre, though I guess most would fall into a fantasy/sci-fi realm. But even then that doesn't totally feel right. "King Rat" (which I just read) takes a fairy tale and overlays it onto modern London. And it *is* London, just with an underground subculture that would be considered fantasy. Then you have "The City and The City," a book that Mieville considers his most accessible, which won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the 2010 BSFA award for best novel, and is in the running for the Hugo award for best novel. He joked that until he was nominated, he hadn't realized his book was science fiction. I would have considered it a highly-politicized detective novel with a slightly odd conceit. Mieville self-categorizes in the relatively recent genre of "new weird" -- a classification that has yet to gain traction in the academic world. Regardless, if you haven't read him, and think you might like this type of writing, I highly recommend picking up one of his novels.
Mieville's panel was the only one in which I reached for a notepad to jot down what he was saying. (Yes, I work with technology every day but yearn to spend my time writing on paper.) And there was one moment that resonated with me -- and that I thought might also resonate with the Losties.
A woman asked a question about "Un Lun Dun", Mieville's young adult fantasy novel. The woman explained that she loved the characters of Deeba and Zanna and was wondering if Mieville was going to write a sequel to the book because she wanted more adventures for the girls. Mieville, who answered questions with a prolific thoughtfulness missing from most panelists, kindly explained that he felt as if he told their story and wasn't planning on revisiting the characters. He continued on to say that as geeks, we (including himself) don't know how to let the things we love lie -- we can't leave them alone. And that's how we end up with "The Boba Fett Paradox." In that scenario we have a character we all think is cool -- Boba Fett -- so Lucas decides to give us more Boba Fett in the prequels, thereby ruining the mystique of Boba Fett and rendering him uncool.
It's so freaking true. And the Star Wars prequels are a great example of not being able to let go -- I know some of you probably want to punch me now, but I am a girl weaned on the originals and I hate the prequels. Darth Vader should never throw his arms up in the air and scream "NOOOOOO" like he's a lovelorn teenager. Darth Vader crushes people's throats with his clenched fist -- he's a badass. But, once again, I digress.
And I couldn't help but think of the interviews Cuse and Lindelof were giving towards the end of LOST where they were basically saying, "Look, we have no control over what ABC does with our franchise, but we're ending our story -- and we're ending our story for our characters." And it was obvious that they were trying to wrest as much control over their show from ABC as possible. A move I respect. Because, honestly, I don't want a LOST movie like the second X-Files movie -- a movie that made me sad because it was *so* clear that that show was over and should have been left alone -- that I want my memories of Mulder to be from seasons 1-6, not of him sitting in a home office surrounded by newspaper clippings. My last image of LOST is of Jack and Vincent in a bamboo forest -- and I don't ever want that image sullied by later adaptations.
But that's just me. . . .I'm kind of a narrative purist.
Seriously, buy a China Mieville novel.
@tahoewikander
