Media Tie-ins : Room for Nuance?

The debate about the artistic value of media tie-ins (or wookie books as I like to call them) is one of the older and more fruitful sticking points in SF discussion.  I even have an issue of SF Eye that explicitly blames Del Rey for killing SF by introducing Star Wars novelisations.

The debate has reignited recently and prompted Nick Tam to try and pull his thoughts together on the matter.  the result was about 12,000 words spread out over five different parts (starting here).

Personally, I have mixed feelings about how to even start thinking about this category of work but I tend to not see them so much as a failing by the authors involved as a failure by SF fans who would raqther read Stargate Atlantis novels than River of Gods or Light.  So my feeling isn't so much that these books suck, it's more that I think that there really should not be a market for them, but I think that about pretty much everything so I'm not closer to ariculating a position about them.

FACT : I got into SF by reading media tie-ins.  Worse that that, I read gaming fiction.  I particularly liked D&D tie-in Azure Bonds by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub as well as the Shadowrun tie-in Robert N. Charette's Secrets of Power trilogy (well... the first couple of books at least).  Now, seventeen years later, I couldn't honestly tell you what any of those books was about but the fact that I have this website speaks warmly of their power as I wasnt much of a reader before I got into those books.

FACT : A lot of writers that I like and admire have written wookie books.  Christopher Priest has written tie-ins for Cronenburg's  eXiste EXiS Existenz, Short Circuit and (somewhat weirdly) Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa.  Similarly Pat Cadigan (who, lest we forget, had a story in the Mirrorshades anthology) has written books based upon Lost in Space (a much under-rated film) and Jason X (a film that is not unreasonably considered to be shit).  Going even further, the Strugatsky brothers allowed Andrei Tarkovski to produce a film based upon their Roadside Picnic and then happily wrote a novelisation of the film entitled Stalker.

This is to say that I think that wookie books fill an important niche in the SF foodchain.  Many authors (including those on their way up or those who are having a creatively quieter time than at other points in their careers) make money by writing them and that is a good thing regardless of where you are at in your career.

However, if you asked me to review one of these works I would probably tell you to fuck off.

The reason for this is because I read for reasons that are completely opposite to the main selling points of media tie-ins.  I read because I want to be challenged and I want to encounter something new.  I do not want familiar characters and places and ideas.

This is very much like the final episode of the last series of Doctor Who.  The writers pulled together all of the various shit-munching NPCs that The Doctor has hung around with since the reboot and put them together.  I suspect that this was supposed to make me cheer as the "gang was back together".  Instead it made me reach for the sick bag as the writer was effectively cashing in on the accumulated good will that those characters had generated in normal episodes.  It was one trip back to the cow too many.

I feel no desire to ever return to the cow and this makes the mindset of the wookie book genre audience utterly alien to me.


So while I can accept that they are part of the genre landscape and a lifeline for many authors as well as a gateway for many genre fans, I can't help thinking that wookie books are something that you should grow out of.

Comments

[Heather]

>SF fans who would raqther read Stargate Atlantis novels than River of Gods or Light

This observation makes me wonder if some SF don't veer off the beaten path to find books other than what is advertised or placed on bookshelves. It reminds me of radio vs. satellite. Radio presents a limited selection compared to satellite, and yet many people still think radio is all there is to music. So it's partly the readers not seeking out different books, but it's also the corporate conglomerates limiting access/excessively marketing media-tie in books, imho.

And this is the second time in the past week someone's mentioned RIVER OF GODS to me. That's obviously A Sign so I will add it to my TBR list.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Heather :-)

I remember once seeing a documentary about the rise of hip=hop and a producer said that they key to success was not crossing over from black to white but rather crossing over from cool to non-cool by convincing people with little actual interest in music to buy the CDs.

I think the same is true of books.

Media tie-ins are incredibly visible and branded. If you knew nothing about SF you might well buy them because you recognise stuff you like. HOWEVER, we, as people who know what's going on in the scene (apart from you who has criminally failed to read River of Gods ;-p) we pride ourselves on knowing what's out there and so buying a tie-in feels like a step backwards from cool to un-cool.

[Farah Mendlesohn]

However, if you asked me to review one of these works I would probably tell you to fuck off.

The reason for this is because I read for reasons that are completely opposite to the main selling points of media tie-ins. I read because I want to be challenged and I want to encounter something new. I do not want familiar characters and places and ideas.

Then you would be wrong and as much of a snob as I once was. Try Karen Traviss's Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero (2006) and tell me it's unchallenging and nothing new.

[Jonathan M]

Nope. No interest.

1) I can't stand MilSF. It's way too close to my day job. Military thrillers have had horrifying and tangible effects upon the way people think about war and so any work of MilSF is walking a razor's edge from my point of view... either they get it right by saying the right things and adopting the right attitudes and are just about bearable or they get it wrong in which case the books aren't only irritating to me personally, they're drifting into an arena of book that I consider actively harmful.

2) I simply can't bear Star Wars. I was never that huge a fan to start with but nowadays I simply can't sit through it. A mate asked if I wanted to go and see The Clone Wars but just the thought of sitting through an hour of fighting and jedis and space battles made me feel somewhat uneasy.

As a result, putting myself through what is not only a star wars novel but a quite full on MilSF one with terrorist cells and stuff is probably as close as you can get to a cast-iron guarantee that I will not enjoy myself. Furthermore, I read part of City of Pearl a while back and it failed to hold my interest. So while I know a lot of critics have a lot of time for Traviss, the name doesn't sell the book for me.

So... no. I won't read that book. I'm sure it's very good as far as such things go but the chances of me enjoying it are astronomical. Too much can go wrong.

[Ian Sales]

Er, *Andrei* Tarkovsky.

Isn't the popularity of tie-in books - especially shared universe ones like Star Wars Expanded Universe (or whatever they call it) - well, it's all about "immersion", surely? And readers of non-tie-in genre fiction increasingly want that too: cf the success of Jordan's Wheel of Time, Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, any paper breezeblock by Peter Hamilton, and the great wall of books Asher's building for his Polity series...

[Jonathan M]

Hi Ian :-)

Er... yes. In my defence, it was late at night to be writing about Tarkovsky (particularly when I think that Stalker is a deeply problematic film, even when compared with something like Solaris). I shall ake the requisite modification.

I don't know about immersion because I don't understand it.

If immersion is all about wanting the world around you to melt away then surely that's just a question of the book holding your attention. I remember once doing A-level maths homework and looking up to realise that three hours had slipped by without noticing. But I wouldn't say that maths problems are *immersive*.

I'm genuinely not sure whether I understand the term or the psychology. Maybe I just don't experience this sensation when reading. It's a bit like escapism... I can understand that but it's not something I'd want to do or be capable of doing.

[Ian Sales]

I think I actually prefer Mirror to Stalker and Solaris, but I probably need to watch them a few more times. And I've yet to watch The Sacrifice or Nostalgia...

Immersion... is, I think, more than "wanting the world to melt away". It's the reader's engagement with an invented world - and the richer that world, the more involved, the more *real*, the engagement. It's not what I look for in genre fiction myself, but it's becoming increasingly popular. It's putting the onus on world-building to capture and keep readers, and good characterisation, prose, plotting, etc., are being seen as less important. Immersion may be one reason why fantasy outsells sf.

[Jonathan M]

Yeah... I know that that is "the line" about immersion but the idea of wanting more and more info about a setting in order to improve the reading experience is so alien to me that I have trouble taking that particular line at face value :-)

[mcd]

I think people want more and more info about a setting for its own sake, and not for immersion per se. The books you're talking about here are not deep reads, and I would describe the settings themselves as "broad" rather than "deep." Their attraction lies partly in the power, usually visual but not always, of the non-literary medium being tied-in.

[Heather]

That's very interesting about the hip-hop phenomenon. Explains a lot. When I've read River of Gods, I'll come back here for my Get Out Of Jail Free card!

[Farah Mendlesohn]

Feel free not to read tie in books, but then you have to refrain from making the kind of comments you did because they are based on ignorance. I have now (thanks to Traviss) read enough tie in novels to be aware that many are not the way you describe.

I don't *enjoy* them, any more than you do, but I refrain from using my lack of enjoyment as a blunt instrument to condemn an entire mode.

Remember the corrollary of Sturgeon's law. If 90% of anything is crap, then 10% of anything is worth regarding carefully.

[Jonathan M]

And how do I describe them?

"read because I want to be challenged and I want to encounter something new. I do not want familiar characters and places and ideas."

Are you suggesting that tie-in novels are not full of familiar characters, places and ideas? I pointedly don't dismiss them bluntly as all being rubbish. I'm fully aware that excellent authors write them and I'm sure that technically the standards vary as widely as they do across the genre as a whole.

My issue is with ethos. Media tie-ins scratch an itch provoked by people's desire to return to a familiar setting and learn more about it. Obviously some books are going to do this to a greater extent than others (The Zahn wookie books feature most of the characters from the films, Traviss' seemingly do not, or at least not as main protagonists) but media tie-ins are motivated by the desire to return to the cow.

I don't feel that desire ever (as I say above, I don't understand associated ideas such as 'immersion' or 'escapism') and I think that the desire to explore the known rather than strike out for the unknown is a rather unfortunate tendency.