Trans(ference/lation/ition)

One of my pleasures is reading. It is also one of my guilty pleasures as I tend to read books of a speculative nature. My thoughts have always dwelled near the question why would I want to read about the world I live in? Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the escape? Yes, I’m an escapist, and that has included worlds of alternative reality, fantastic worlds, futuristic worlds, and even alternatively represented worlds such as animation. With that (probably unsurprising) admission out of the way I can get to a topic that has bothered me for quite a while, which has also had a new development (new if only in the case that I recently noticed it).

Authors, genres, sorting and status.

An author I’m rather fond of is Iain Banks. he writes fiction. Most of it could be in this world although some of it is a bit iffy, or at least somewhat psychotic. Okay, that describes most fiction as how “real” is the illuminati in comparison to Area 51 and extra terrestrials? I first read Banks’ Dead Air, which I borrowed from a friend in 2004. I loved it, but I couldn’t remember who had written it after I gave it back and didn’t read anything else of his for half a decade. When I finally did figure out who that Scottish writer my Scottish friend loaned me was I was confronted with two things. The first was Iain Banks. I proceeded to read The Steep Approach to Garbadale, The Business, and Whit. The second thing I found was Iain M Banks, the author of the Culture series of science fiction and various one offs. Those of you who might have bothered to guess will probably realize that Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks are the same person.

Average logic seems to hold that people cannot write for multiple genres at once. Or that audiences don’t shop for multiple genres.

But maybe logic should think of all the pseudonyms out there. And then maybe question the purpose of those alternate pen names: Banks wrote 3 books as Banks then got his publishers to publish a sci-fi book. it came out under M. Banks so as not to confuse audiences (or so holds the WIkipedia entry). Maybe it’s for the readers. It’s definitely not because Banks cannot write for both genres as he does well and has done will for over two decades and twenty books.

So why is it that the United States publisher (Orbit) has chosen to publish Banks’ latest novel, Transitions, by Iain M. Banks? It was published in the United Kingdom as a book by Iain Banks and the two book covers are visible, unproblematically, on Banks’ website showing the different covers and different names.

Banks has no problem with his name separation (and integration). So why do I care? What is it that I see as troubling and annoying about both the separation and integration of a science fiction identity and a fiction identity? Mainly status.
Salman Rushdie is a good, similar example. Rushdie’s works are fantastic. They question reality. But they’re “Fiction.” Even one of his earliest works, Grimus, a very “science fiction and fantasy” novel if ever there were one, is happily labeled “Fiction” and sorted alongside Rushdie’s other, “serious” books. While it is labeled “Fantasy novel/Science Fiction” on Wikipedia the Amazon entry (as well as most other booksellers) has ignored this and simply lists it as “Literature & Fiction.”

In bookstores’ entry systems especially of 20 years ago, when both the M and Rushdie’s singular straying happened, Fiction was the high genre and anything more “generic,” anything that needed a modifier, be it fantasy, science fiction, thriller, romance, was the low move toward rubbish, or at least special audiences (where special has all of its connotations, good and bad).

Rushdie rode his barely (and yet very) “Fiction” style out to be one of the most influential writers of the late 20th century. This has many parts to do with his status as a post colonial, and yet British, subject as well as the politico-religious issues surrounding Satanic Verses. However, as his work was “serious” it brought in the very not serious early novel. This preserved the singular location of an author within a store, and essentially, the analogue archive.

In contrast, Neal Stephenson, a second prime example, whose early work was in fiction (The Big-U, Zodiac and a few disavowed co-written works) before he smashed onto the scene with Snow Crash and Diamond Age, two cyberpunk highlights. Stephenson is located in the science fiction section. Again, this is in contrast to his incredibly popular (alternative) historical fiction Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle. Because his original hits were in science fiction he has remained in that area. This has not prevented him from garnering support and sales, but it has prevented him from winning awards other than those in science fiction, which his popular historical fiction novels do not fit. It has placed him, marked him, classified him, as a science fiction author.

The placement within the archive, one’s labeling/identificying denotes the status of the author. Rushdie is respected as he is in Fiction. Stephenson is less respected as he is in Science-Fiction. Banks avoided this very possibility with the little M., which separated identities, forced his presence into both places of the archive (and store). With the doubled name Banks broke the status game.

But that is exactly where I see the problem now. My guess is that within the United States, where sci-fi is low, but popular, M. Banks and the Culture novels sell better. This might be switched in teh UK where Banks is known as a Scottish author and gets additional sales because of that and the brogue of his Fiction novels.

The collapse of Banks to M. Banks within the US does a few things. It attempts to ride M. Banks’ greater popularity so as to increase the Fiction sales. This is fine as far as anything Capitalistic goes. However, it also will problematize the location, and therefore status of Banks in the Ficiton section. As M. Banks his previous Fiction books stand to be reissued as M. Banks and relocated to the sci-fi section. In some ways this makes no sense, in others it’s good business, but I see it simply as the denigration and codification of generic borders.

The conference Digital Arts and Culture is meant to combine various people from various fields in order to talk and work. It’s interdisciplinary. It also seems to combine people who are in multiple disciplines. It’s multidisciplinary. Unfortunately, the result has similar pitfalls to the standard woes of disciplines. Namely: a) you go to what you know b) there are multiple sessions at any given time c) these sessions roughly break down into humanities, arts and computer science. These three end up meaning that the three groupings have much more limited interaction than might otherwise happen.

I have two examples to elaborate.

1.

On the first day there was a panel on Software Studies. In it Aden Evens gave a talk on Programming and Fold (or Edge as he changed it to). The talk was interesting, but it was to a room filled with programmers who were mumbling and stirring in anger during the first half of his talk saying “wrong wrong WRONG!” to themselves and each other. This was offset by the second half when all of the sudden something clicked and they suddenly became interesting as he moved to the second part that he was trying to connect. However, the q/a consisted primarily of people taking him to task for various ways

Now, there are two things that are important here. Aden Evens is, apparently, a humanistist (yes, it’s a clunky word and there might be something better). He has time spent coding, so he’s done his work enough to talk about the programming side and, importantly, present on a panel that’s slightly more focused on the programming side. The second is that he was largely alone in that room as his fellow humanitists were likely off in the embodiment and performance session.

The result is that the two sides did not really interact and the place where they did interact was as if in enemy territory. Even though there was discussion, it was slightly at odds.

2.

The second example is when I presented on the second day. My own talk had been accepted in both the Future of Humanist Inquiry (humanitist) and Software Studies (programmers) sections, but for various reasons I went with the Software Studies side. At my panel there were four people:

• Scholarly civilization: utilizing 4X gaming as a framework for humanities digital media
  [Elijah Meeks, University of California, Merced]
• Shaping stories and building worlds on interactive fiction platforms
  [Alex Mitchell, Communications and New Media Programme, National University of Singapore]
  [Nick Montfort, Massachusets Institute of Technology]
• Translation (is) not localization: language in gaming
  [Stephen Mandiberg, University of California, San Diego]
• Seriality, the Literary and Database in Homestar Runner: Some Old Issues in New Media
  [Stephanie Boluk, Department of English, University of Florida]

Of note is that my panel consists of one “refuge from the humanities theme,” one critical geographer, myself (who chose this option and tailored intendingly), and a cs oriented twosome doing slightly more typically programmer things.

The result (and the opposite of the first example) is that questions and discussion was geared completely toward the programming talk. There were some humanitists in the room (I saw them) but they all tended to leave to go in and out. Of the 20 minutes of Q/A 18 or so were discussion about the IF presentation. No questions went to the critical geographer. Now, this might be considered a matter of bitching, but i’m really trying to say it’s a matter of disconnect.

For instance, one of the lines of questions into the IF discussion was focused on the movement and particularities of platforms, programming and possibilities of moving between platforms. This is localization, the exact topic that I had been discussing and in a very similar way to which I had been discussing. So similar, in fact, that the chair and I had a glance at eachother before I felt the need to jump in and point out some of the problems with what they were discussing. This is discussion as it should be, yes, but it is also disconnect that the completely obvious link.

DAC then is interdisciplinary, fine. But it’s also very fragmented by the mentality of doing what’s comfortable, going to the talks that you know, and of course, mingling with the people who are like you.