{"id":783,"date":"2011-11-15T09:22:45","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T09:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?p=783"},"modified":"2022-08-26T08:31:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T08:31:30","slug":"japes-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/japes-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Japes joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

My short story collection\u00a0Jeapes Japes<\/em>\u00a0has been reviewed<\/a>, which is nice; favourably, which is even better; and it\u2019s the first time my entire body of short fiction has come under the critical spotlight, which is absolutely wonderful. Though I say it myself, I appear to be quite good. Or maybe I should say that I appear to have been quite good, as I haven\u2019t written short fiction now for over a decade. By the time my last piece appeared (\u201cGo with the flow\u201d,\u00a0Interzone<\/em>, 1999) I was into novel writing mode and life is too short for both, sadly. At least, mine is.<\/p>\n

The line I found most interesting was this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stories contained in the collection generally find the characters tending to merely support the novum of the story, rather than being the centrepiece of the tale. The tales therefore better present ideas rather than uniquely interesting characters, and after each the reader dwells more on the notion presented than the personalities.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yup, I\u2019ll agree with that. (And while I\u2019m here, may I add that the reviewer is quite fond of the word \u2018novum\u2019 \u2013 it turns up once or twice later on too.) I strongly suspect it\u2019s the influence of too much Asimov in my youth, and it\u2019s very nice of the reviewer to make a strength out of what I would still regard as a weakness. A beginning writer will usually write about nothing\u00a0but\u00a0<\/em>the idea, and the story either grinds to a halt or turns out not very good because you need \u2013 gasp! \u2013 characters, who are interesting enough to make you care what happens to them, and another couple of ideas to make it into a proper story. I got the hang of that, but the originating idea always dominated. In novels, this was not such a problem because the originating idea inspired lots of other stuff and eventually it could just merge into the background. In short fiction I never had enough room for that to happen.<\/p>\n

This is actually something I am trying hard to shake off, because I would love to be able to write just good ol\u2019 adventures, pure and simple. Someone gets out of bed one morning and pow! Things start happening in their life. Some writers can do that as easily as breathing. I\u2019m working on it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very glad the reviewer considers \u201cPages out of order\u201d (F&SF<\/em>, 1997) to be the stand-out story, because so do I: it\u2019s one of the most personal contributions and also one I would really like to expand into a novel, if I can just do all the necessary working out. It might not be the only time travel story set in an English public school \u2013 though no others come to mind at present \u2013 but I\u2019d bet good money it\u2019s the only one ever published by\u00a0F&SF<\/em>. \u201cCrush\u201d (Interzone<\/em>, 1993) was also quite a personal one to write, getting a lot of stuff off my chest, but I had no idea I had done it well enough for it to be described as a \u201crather chilling tale of obsession \u2026 Jealousy, obsession and incarnate rage are all wonderfully snippeted in this brief tale\u201d. Cor.<\/p>\n

So, what are you waiting for: buy from the publisher\u00a0Wizard\u2019s Tower<\/a>\u00a0or, if you\u2019re one of those people who absolutely\u00a0insist\u00a0<\/em>on patronising evil empires, from\u00a0Amazon<\/a>. Let\u2019s give the reviewer the final word so you know what you\u2019re getting:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stories leap sporadically from one genre to another, without flow or warning and yet they still somehow all work so well together. A reader gets far more from the ideas and suggestions each story creates, than from the characters themselves which are never really explored to much depth. This augments Jeapes Japes as the classic SF short story writing that gives each tale a striking novum and characters far more incidental to that central idea. Indeed it is not the characters that stay with you when you put the book down, but the rich and exciting ideas that burst from this collective library of short stories.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My short story collection\u00a0Jeapes Japes\u00a0has been reviewed, which is nice; favourably, which is even better; and it\u2019s the first time my entire body of short fiction has come under the critical spotlight, which is absolutely wonderful. Though I say it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[36,37],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-jeapes-japes","tag-reviews-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3843,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/3843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}