Review/Musings on Harry Potter

I used to view the entire Harry Potter phenomenon with a bit of bemusement. I had already been reading fantasy books for years when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released, and while I enjoyed it, I never imagined that it would turn into the international phenomenon it has become. From my perspective, J.K. Rowling was simply following in the footsteps of Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard?, Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week, among many others. I couldn't understand why people were going nuts over Harry Potter when these other books had been largely ignored, by comparison.

There is no denying that Harry Potter satisfies all of what I think are the requirements for good fantasy (not necessarily an exhaustive list):

• An engaging, original, well-realized fantasy world


• Simple yet evocative writing which can be understood after one reading


• Plenty of action


• A high "that would be so cool" factor


• A well-defined objective to be accomplished by the hero

On the other hand, so do both of the titles I mentioned above, as well as thousands of other fantasy novels, for adults and children, none of which have become anywhere near as popular as Harry Potter, and for a long time, I couldn't understand why.

However, after reading all seven of the Harry Potter books in rapid succession this month, I've realized that the Harry Potter books do indeed have something that many fantasy novels lack: compelling characters. Although she frequently defines them with melodrama and outrageous emotional outbursts, Rowling's characters are undeniably human. Harry and his cohorts suffer all (and then some) of the uncertainty, pain, anger and fright that people fighting ultimate evil while simultaneously going through puberty might be expected to feel. By contrast, many fantasy heroes, after being plucked from their humble beginnings, stoically put real life on hold and forge ahead with whatever Herculean task the author has set them without bothering with pesky emotions too much.

The requirements I outlined above make for great escapist writing. If you want to take a mental holiday for a while, then any book satisfying those requirements will do the trick. However, to get people really worked up about something, an author needs to do more than create a world that people care about, he or she needs to create characters that people can laugh with, cry with, yell at when they're being stupid, and fall in love with, and Rowling does this well. Not with very much finesse, but well.

That's not to say that Rowling has a monopoly on inspiring empathy; the success of the Harry Potter series undoubtedly involved a certain amount of luck as well as talent. However, the books certainly had the potential to become wildly popular, not to mention the widest possible target audience, so in hindsight, it shouldn't have been a surprise that they did.


Grade: A-


For adult-oriented fantasy that features emotions, check out George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, and Terry Goodkind.

Secret Influences of Harry Potter

Over the last ten years it has been very much in vogue to trace the many literary influences that are “borrowed” by J. K. Rowling in her popular “Harry Potter” series. Usually these analyses focus on Tolkien fantasy and Greek mythology. This essay will delve into a less frequently cited but equally influential subgenre that has shaped the Harry Potter novels: the myth of England.

England is a fictional island nation replete with kings and queens, carriages, castles and crumpets. As a genre, readers usually refer to its elaborate mythology as “English literature” or “English history,” terms that I will use fairly interchangeably even though hardcore fans insist upon a subtle distinction. Like many successful franchises, an entire convoluted “universe” developed with central classic works and innumerable spin-offs, each with ardent fans and skeptical critics.

Like Tolkien fantasy and its self-evident lineage from the J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series, scholars also tend to look for a foundational English literature work although they disagree with rather it should be found within the subgenres of Arthurian legend (popularized by T. H. White in his “Once and Future King”) or in Shakespearian literature. Clearly English literature borrows heavily from both and even evolved a smattering of Steampunk elements when later fabulist authors such as Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters introduced the “Industrial Revolution” or “Victorian” cycle.

Speculation as to where Rowling would have been able to come into contact with English literature ranges wildly. The period between 1980 and the present was certainly an era where English literature had fallen out of a favor with the public and was rarely seen except in specialty stores. Nevertheless elements of Rowling’s novels show undeniable traces of the English mythology.

Consider the bizarrely structured Hogwarts School with its subdivision into competing, strangely named “houses” complete with a highly stratified division by year, housemasters and exotic impractical rituals. Often thought by poorly-read critics to be a product of Rowling’s imagination, an observant reader can spot suspicious similarities to earlier institutes ingrained in the mythology of England such as Oxford and Cambridge.

Once the idea takes hold, the scholar can find a myriad of references, nods and outright plagiarisms. The train which travels to the school is right out of the Industrial Revolution cycle, with a little of Steampunk’s back-cast eye towards how a primitive society might develop technology parallel to our own. Hagrid’s cottage and the nearby town of Hogsmeade are both clearly modeled on English cities, architecture and society. Other critics have pointed out the similarities between the Quidditch, with its nearly incomprehensible set of arbitrary rules, and the reoccurring English fairy tales about cricket and polo.

It is perhaps timely that an author should revive an interest in such an antiquated and romanticized subgenre as the myth of England. After all, Rowling’s broad adventure-chocked simplifications and chummy schoolmate camaraderie are a welcome break after the fractionalization and variety of late English literature creations. One had literally to rely upon the supplements of intricate maps, character charts and timelines just to follow the main plots, not to mention the billboard hierarchies, intricate politics and endless rise-and-fall-of-an-empire wars. Die-hard, socially inept fans had even retreated into private languages like British English, Cockney and Scottish which will remind social scientists of similar phenomenon with Tolkien’s Elvish and Star Trek’s Klingon. The diversity of authors each writing offshoots and spin-offs aimed at obsessive specialty audiences had introduced a plague of contradictions and created an exclusionary subculture nearly as vast as Star Wars.

Traditional English literature has meanwhile lost its shine, wallowing in an endless repetition of chipper street urchins, gnarled misers and sexist depictions of powerless women. Its canon of worn clichés perpetuated by its “classic” authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf have been replaced by more exciting and culturally relevant authors.

Sci-fi Do’s and Don’ts Part I

While writing reviews of science-fiction novels, I naturally notice certain trends in what I like and dislike about sci-fi books. Beyond that, I’ve discovered that there are some reoccurring types of “mistakes.” These aren’t just subgenres or archetypes I dislike, but unintentional errors that strike me as just plain poor writing.

I’m not particularly keen on “rules” for artistic expressions (they always beg to be broken in creative ways), but I’d like to open some discussion on suggestions for the genre. Sort of “Sci-fi Do’s and Don’ts.”

To start off, I’d like to stamp a big “DON’T” onto the idea of writing about the future through a narrow and overly-specific lens of one’s own time. This goes beyond scientific or technical limitations like Ray Bradbury and C.S. Lewis describing the canals on Mars.

For example: Why would any author think that the slang in their own period would exist 500 years or even 10 years into the future? Painfully dating too much sci-fi literature are words and phrases like “You dig?”, “Gee whiz”, “Foxy”, “Groovy” and worse. You still see it happening today in literature (“Cool”) that will be dated within a decade. It is fine in books set in the very near future or when there is a specific reason (a regressed community, a future society with a craze or fetish for a “classic” era of the past, a linguistic theme, etc). An excellent solution is the development of an original fictional slang. “Clockwork Orange” does this to great effect but less extreme examples or common.

Similarly, fashions change. I think authors should consider that everything from clothing to architecture changes significantly with time and that they should not expect their contemporary taste to be an eternal constant. Bad examples of this include the way spaceships conceived in the 1950’s are modeled explicitly on 50’s cars, complete with fenders, fins and ultra-sleek designs. These visions of future ships fail to take into account either functionality (For instance, spaceships that never enter atmosphere and aren’t worried about radar don’t need to be aerodynamic or sleek. Army camouflage designs would be unlikely, while pure black paint would be considerably more effective for stealth. Stationary guns and view-screens that are locked into place facing “forward” doesn’t make sense for a ship in 3D space where direction is arbitrary) or changing taste (Extraneous fins are not likely to stay in style. Egg chairs are not space efficient or particularly comfortable. Space outfits do not look good with flaring collars nor do they need them in the absence of wind.).

I get frustrated when characters in far-flung futuristic worlds just happens to be listening to the same music the author enjoys from his or her own time. This is possible but pretty unlikely. We tend to fall into the trap of thinking the music/TV/fashion/etc of our own time is the best, most enduring or never-to-be-rivaled “Golden Era”.

This is perhaps the most common “narrow lens” problem in futuristic literature. References, descriptors, quotes and metaphors from our present or recent past would probably not be used in great quantity in the distant future (and especially not in an alternative or alien civilization). It destroys the illusion of a vivid reality for the reader, a reality where the book is just one cross-section of fully functional independent universe. This doesn’t apply to books narrated for an audience explicitly in the present day (H. G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” as one example) but it applies doubly for first-person narrations by futuristic characters and omniscient third-person glimpses in the thoughts of such characters. A solution, in my opinion, is to make a statistically proportional number of fictional references to made-up people, organizations, places and events. You can always footnote them or add a glossary to explain them in detailed terms. This provides a chance to flesh out the context of the history leading up to the novel and culture of the contemporary happenings.

Other qualities tend to lose their sheen with time as well, and the author might want to keep that in mind. Shock value especially fades quickly. Imagine what your novel will be like if the topic you consider controversial and shocking becomes commonplace in the real world? Or a cliché in literature? Will your novel still be as powerful? Will it still have merit as a story, a work of art or social critique? It’s something to think about.

Thoughts on Our Postcyberpunk World

In 1998 Lawrence Person wrote an article called “Notes on a PostCyberpunk Manifesto” (originally from Nova Express linked from its reprint on Slashdot). He defines postcyberpunk as a genre the evolved out of cyberpunk, a transformation centered around leather-clad, motorcycle-riding anti-heroes being replaced by productive average members of fairly functional society.

Person was clearly onto something, although it is tough to say whether the distinction from cyberpunk was enough to merit a new genre. The setting is pretty much the same (futuristic metropolises dominated by technology) and the themes overlap quite a bit (cybergenetics, genetic engineering, technology affecting society, information at the fingertips of anyone, etc). Only the characters have made a significant change of type and this is the key. What Person fails to do, is to contextualize (or historicize if you prefer) this shift.

The construction of the protagonist is, with few exceptions, the window into the ideas, opinions, beliefs and observations of the author. Even anti-heroes define a world-view through what they oppose and unreliable narrators tend to be confused about the very things that the reader (or sometimes society as a whole) also are confused about. Problematic protagonists help define the belief systems of the age they were written in through the very qualities that get them dubbed “problematic.”

When one looks at the shift from the 1980’s into the late 1990’s, we can see many of the changes that are echoed in the literary characters of science fiction. The technology junky, the nerd, the computer user, the programmer and the videogame player all moved from the fringe of society to the center (the motorcyclist and the criminal are left behind). No longer outsiders or anomalies, these figures became commonplace elements of a broad middle-class. The archetypical image of a computer user went from the reclusive, anti-social hacker to the suit-and-tie office worker and the well-adjusted student on a laptop in a café.

That science-fiction urge that has been around for centuries, the desire to picture ourselves and our society in the future, simply followed the current trends as it often does.

One place that Person doesn’t go is into the structure of postcyberpunk, an area that shows as much development as characterization and deserves as much attention as setting and theme. Of great interest is the way that science-fiction has reached out to the technological advances in our society and incorporated them directly into its form. Authors are able to tap the immense amount of data on the internet for research and inspiration. Readers can communicate with each other and provide feedback to the author over long distances in real time or at leisure on discussion groups. Postcyberpunk books even tend to make use conventions borrowed from computer code, emails, discussion and news groups and other means of communication.

Blurring has occurred at the boundaries between mediums (not to mention genres). Evidence of this is visible in internet literature (such as Geoff Ryman’s “253”), manga, graphic novels, videogames, digital artwork and book websites. An emphasis on the interactivity has arisen particularly in highly literate videogames that contain novel length amounts of detail, dialogue and description. Players are given an ever increasing amount of freedom to make choices and customize their experience. The “worldbuilding” to which Lawrence Person refers to has found a new peak in massively multiplayer online games with their own internal societies and economies. Immersion for even conventional literature material is enhanced by television, movie and game adaptations creating multi-media, in-depth story-universes like “Star Trek” and “Ghost in the Shell.”

Immersion into online communities, games and globally popular story-universes has changed from being escapism to involvement. Those people who continue to reject technology are the ones being cut off from society. This is as much a matter of mass communication (cell phones, email, AIM, news sites, digital cameras, uploading) as culture (literature, art, shows, movies, games).

While many of these changes are not the sole property of the 90’s and 00’s (the 80’s saw the rise of “synergy” and cross-media marketing tie-ins), it is postcyberpunk material that seems to most frequently reflect these changes. While early science-fiction literature was showing the dangers of technology and dystopia, it tended to set literature in opposition to or in rejection of the future (think “Fahrenheit 451” or the reduction of vocabulary with double-speak in “1984”). In cyberpunk literature the protagonist is fully complicit (and often ahead of the curve) in the onrush of technological progress. The character has willingly given up the page for the computer screen, the physical for the virtual, and has found freedom (both artistically and literally) in a technological expression. Now, in the postcyberpunk era, it is the author and the reader who are undergoing these same changes. Society has begun to accept technological advances as less of an inevitable threat and more as a logical extension of scientific and social possibilities. The literature community, particularly the science-fiction community, has likewise come to accept technology as enabling their artistic freedom rather than destroying it.

This is why I think we can expect postcyberpunk literature to continue growing in output and popularity. For the time being, at least, we live in a postcyberpunk world.

Introduction to the Book Walrus

The Book Walrus is a book review blog primarily centered on science-fiction and fantasy (or thereabouts) but not necessarily limited to these genres (although it will be limited to fiction).

Reviews are written by three authors (and fans of the genre) and so there may be repeats and internal inconsistancies, but with any luck this will only provide a broader spectrum of ideas and opinions. The reviews may take many formats, but will usually be accompanied by a letter grade.

Spoilers will be minimized (plots discriptions will usually be limited to the premise) but read at your own risk.

If you enjoy the The Book Walrus, you might also check out The Film Walrus at http://filmwalrus.blogspot.com/