Know Where You Stand

Had an interesting experience the past week at a virtual writers’ conference. The instructive sessions were good. One was on defamiliarization, a technique where familiar things or situations are presented in ways that are unexpected or not obvious. The presenter showed great examples from Nathan Pyle’s Strange Planet, like this one:

Of course, this is a non-obvious way of presenting a sunburn.

During the conference I also had two opportunities to make a 10-minute pitch of my book STONE BY STONE to agents. The goal in these meetings is to get the agent to request your manuscript, which they would eventually read. Alas, I did not succeed in that, but I did get valuable feedback, about sub-genres in science fiction.

The vast majority of agents post what is commonly known as their MSWL, manuscript wish-list, the kind of books they are looking for. An example:

I am actively looking for:

Fantasy and space opera with lush, vivid worlds and complex political intrigues with deeply personal stakes. Always enjoy: deadly decadent courts, intricate religious orders, knife-to-throat romance. Especially eager for epic/historic fantasy worlds with cultural inspirations outside Europe from authors who know their way around those cultures and histories (Egyptian! Aztec! Ottoman!)

…

(BTW, this brief is an exact fit for Hugo winner A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine … space-opera inspired by Byzantine and Aztec empire.)

Hard vs. Soft

Many MSWLs list things the agent is *not* looking for. One of the agents I pitched called out that while she was interested in science fiction, she was not looking for hard science fiction. I decided to pitch to her anyway, because her reputation was impressive and I wanted to hear her thoughts, and because I felt STONE BY STONE is not hard science fiction.

Turns out I was wrong.

My appreciation of SF, for good or bad, originates in the 70s and 80s. I read everything by Asimov and Heinlein, everything by Jack Vance, and tons of other stuff, from Greg Bear to David Brin to Dan Simmons. What got fixed in my mind then is this: Asimov, Clarke, Bear, Niven and Pournelle – hard SF. Authors like Leguin were absolutely not hard SF, because their stories were inventive social commentary more than science. And for me, space opera, like CJ Cherryh and much of Vance, also did not equal “hard” SF, because their plots don’t necessarily turn on a scientific problem. For Vance in particular, his stories could be transported to modern day exotic settings and still work.

I think this was once true. Decades ago the SF-reading population was vastly smaller and was dominated by hardcore fans who took delight in the subtle differentiations I described. No SF reader of the 1970s would put Clarke and Vance in the same category.

But today, all is changed. The Google consensus is that 10-20% of all readers in the US read some science fiction. That’s millions of people. The vast majority of those readers buy one, maybe two SF books in a year. Looking at these facts, something one of the agents said to me makes perfect sense … Your book has spaceships and other planets – it’s hard SF. I can see how today’s readers would care about that; rather than obsess over fine distinctions, they probably want to know quickly if a book is adventure-across-the-stars like The Expanse, vs. a near-future Earth-bound story like Black Mirror, where we find that life has become a hellscape due to sentient parking meters.

(Note to self: There might be a novel in that premise. Possible titles: YOUR TIME IS UP, or ADD DNA FOR AN ADDITIONAL 15 MINUTES.)

What to do about it?

Even though I didn’t get either agent to take my MSS, I still feel my two agent sessions were wins rather than losses: Their feedback gave me great clarity on how important genre categories are in the market, and how they are far more important to agents than for readers. The agent who I knew upfront didn’t take hard SF, explained to me she had an author in her list, a good author, whose new books she just cannot place because they are hard SF and she lacks the editorial contacts who are interested in that.

So, what are my take-aways?

Own Your Label

As a book, STONE BY STONE has a lot going on. The main part is an SF-thriller plot where the hero, Finn, ultimately thwarts a plan where an evil oligarchic faction tries to seize total power on Finn’s planet. The personal struggle for Finn in all that is, How do you live a moral life in an amoral society? But a quarter of the book presents events – some pretty exciting ones, I daresay – that show the backstory of the planet and the origins of Finn’s character. I think that part of the book is unique, and so did all my beta readers.

But now I see, I need to not lead with that in any way. First priority – get an agent to read the whole MSS. Then they can decide if my approach was good or not. So, I’m going to run with the hard SF label and even talk it up.

Suss the Competition

Among authors discussions on “writing to market” (ie, writing stuff similar to what sells) rarely arrive at an answer. On one side is the “write what you feel” faction, on the other is the “what’s the point if nobody reads what you write?” faction. But for someone like me, who doesn’t need to write to live, there’s no reason you can’t do both.

Empire of Silence: The Sun Eater: Book One. From the blurb:

On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe starts down a path that can only end in fire. He flees his father and a future as a torturer only to be left stranded on a strange, backwater world.
Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, Hadrian must fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.

Another example, Deep Past:

Anthropologist Claire Knowland is about to stumble upon a discovery that will rewrite human history. What begins as a routine excavation erupts into a high-stakes game of survival when her team unearths evidence of an ancient intelligence that defies everything we believed about evolution.
But some truths are too dangerous to uncover. As corrupt officials and ruthless oligarchs close in, Claire finds an unlikely ally in geologist Sergei Anachev, who harbors a secret of his own. Together, they race against time to protect a discovery that could revolutionize our understanding of human consciousness—or get them both killed.

Of course I don’t mean I need to start writing military SF, or archaeological SF … though actually with FORLORN TOYS I’m already doing that. What I do need to do is try and pick up on what’s common in the vibe of these books and find a way for STONE BY STONE to leverage that. As the saying goes, publishers want new books exactly like the old books – except different.

Till next time …