Guest Post: Katharine Kerr on "Boys' Books"

Boys’ Books

by Katharine Kerr

I was lucky enough to grow up in a family of readers.  Admittedly, on my mother’s side of the family, some of them mostly read the Bible or religious works.  Others, like my mother and grandmother, loved the “sweet” Romances of the period.  My uncles loved Westerns and police thrillers.  My father’s parents, on the other hand, were serious Leftists and read serious Leftist books, like DAS KAPITAL in the original German.  Both sides, however, believed in reading aloud to children.  They also believed in public libraries.

From the time I was big enough to walk the ten blocks or so to our local branch, my grandmother and I made a weekly trip to the library.  She loaded up on genre reading for her, and I loaded up on books from the children’s section, mostly animal stories, which I particularly loved.  As soon as I could read, I read a lot, well beyond that illusory category, “grade level”.  That’s when the trouble started.  Not from my grandparents, I hasten to add, but from the other adults around me.

When I was an older child and young teen-ager, back in the 1950s, I began to hear entirely too often, “You shouldn’t be reading that book.  It’s not for you.”  No, I hadn’t picked out a book with too many big words or too much sex, nothing from the “Adult” section of our public library, no Leftist tracts, either.  I had committed the sin of liking Boys’ Books.

It may be hard to imagine now, but there used to be fixed categories of Boys’ Books and Girls’ Books.  Boys got science fiction, adventure stories, historical stories of battles and exploration.  Girls got junior Romances, stories of girls helping others or setting up their own homes, horse stories, and . . . well, I never found much else in that section of the library.  Some were well written, like the “Anne of Green Gables” books or the “Flicka” horse stories.  Most struck me as utter crap, even at thirteen, particularly the junior Romances, such as the Rosamund de Jardin “Marcy” series.  Oh yes, I can’t forget the forerunners of “self help” books.  Those available for girls in the 1950s centered around “how to look pretty and get a boyfriend.”  I never noticed any self help in the Boys’ section.  They, apparently, didn’t need advice.

What I wanted were the adventures, the battles, and the science fiction.  Among the Boys’ Books, I discovered Roy Chapman Andrews and Robert Heinlein’s YA novels, along with a lot of lesser writers whose names, alas, I have forgotten but whom I loved at the time.  When I went to the library desk to check these books out, the voices started.  “Are you getting those for your brother?  No?  Why do you want to read those?  They’re for boys.  You should look in the Girls’ section.”  No librarian actually prevented me from taking the books home, mind.  That was reserved for my mother.  “Why are you reading that junk?” was one of her favorite phrases.  “It’s not for girls.  Take those back.  Get some good books.”

I read most of Heinlein’s YA books while sitting in the library.  Why risk taking them home and getting nagged?  When as a teen, I graduated to SF for grown-ups, the disapproval escalated, too.  My mother helpfully tried to get me to read proper female literature by checking out books for me.  I dutifully read them -- hell, I’d read anything at that age, from cereal boxes on up -- but I never liked them.  Finally, she gave up.

Author Interview: Katharine Kerr

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Katharine Kerr: From childhood on, I’ve always loved to read. Somewhere around age 8 I realized that books did not just magically appear – they were written by people! And I vowed that one day I’d be one of them. I never lost sight of that goal, even when my life turned very difficult in my 20’s. I just kept reading and kept writing for practice. When I finally finished a novel, FLICKERS, that is, a family saga such as was popular in the 1980s, I realized I’d need an agent. People ask me: how did you learn how to get published without the internet? The answer always seems to surprise them. I don’t know why. I went to the public library and looked up the subject in the old-fashioned card catalog. Lo and behold! There was a whole shelf of books on the subject. I read several and followed their advice.

 

DJR: What inspired your book, Haze? 

KK: For some time, several years really, before I started work on it, I had a scene in my mind. A derelict, probably an addict, was sitting on the sidewalk in a far future city when a military officer came striding to offer him redemption . . . for something, I didn’t know what. But they turned out to be Dan Brennan and Captain Evans. I started writing from there.

 

DJR: How does it relate to your other hard sf?

KK: When I wrote POLAR CITY BLUES, back in the 1990s, I didn’t realize that it was the beginning of something longer. After years of working on the Deverry Saga, I wanted to write a one-off, something that ended! One of my friends, Kate Daniel, thought otherwise. She wrote almost all of POLAR CITY NIGHTMARE even though my name’s on the cover – commercial reasons, of course. In these two books, Humanity have settled only a few exoplanets. The dominant species are the Kar-Li and the H’Allevae (known as Hoppers), but the Leps are represented too, under the condescending name of “lizzies”.

            In a short story I wrote, “Its Own Reward,” another sapient species appears, the Val Chiri Gan. This story takes place a long while before the Polar City pair, when the Old Earth is dying. They may reappear in ZYON. I’m not sure yet.

            SNARE and PALACE are two books more closely linked to HAZE. Both are victims of the sudden closing of the same interstellar shunt.  PALACE was another collaboration. I had nothing to do with the sequel, however, and unlike PCN, my name certainly belongs on the cover of PALACE itself.

Sneak Peek: Kathryn Jordan's FLICKERS

Katharine Kerr, writing as Kathryn Jordan, has a new book out, available from Amazon.com and the publisher.

Flickers turns its lens on California’s glamorous silent film era, as Victorian civilities are swept away by a bold new century.

Here's a delicious tantalizer for your enjoyment:

The female lead in FLICKERS, Violet Winters, is the daughter of a very rich man, a California “robber baron”, during the early years of the Twentieth Century.  She’s her father’s princess. She can have anything she wants, except Jack Sutter, the working class man she truly loves.  In 1913, her family pressures her into marrying the social-climbing Maury Rediston, and as the time for the wedding draws near, members of both families come to join the couple-to-be at Sueño, the Winters’ family estate in Southern California. Some of those family members have troubles of their own . . .

In the afternoon, Violet was sitting out in the shady part of the terrace with Gertie and Jane, gossiping while they drank lemonade. The drowsy warm sun came through the eucalyptus trees and sparkled on the crystal pitcher and glasses of the outside service, that sat on the bentwood ebony serving-cart. From her chair, Violet could see the hills, golden in the sun, and the dark gash of Barranca Grande. While Gertie told a long and pointless story about shopping in downtown San Francisco, Violet found her mind drifting to Jack and his kisses.

ASo anyway,@ Gertie finished up. AMama got the gold one, and Mrs. Hearst just loved it, so it was all right.@  She paused, glancing up. AOh, here's Maury, Vi.@

Maury walked onto the terrace with a young man strolling after him. The family resemblence was so strong that Violet recognized him as Maury's younger brother, but he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, as different from Maury as a peacock from a hawk. He had dark eyes, wide and deep-set under thick lashes, a soft, sensual mouth, almost feminine, but redeemed by a strong, chiseled jaw. His clothes were beautifully cut, a white flannel suit with a dove-gray vest and tie, and a perfect straw boater, tipped back at just the right angle on his dark hair. Gertie and Jane stared so rudely that Violet feared they=d start giggling.

AI'd like you to meet my brother,@ Maury said. AFrazier Rediston.@

AFrazier?@  The brother gave them all a sunny smile. ADon't let old Maury be his usual stiff-necked self. Call me Tip. Everybody does.@

Before Maury could retort, Tip strolled over to Violet's chair. He caught her offered hand, shook it, then leaned down and kissed her soundly on the cheek.

Is This Story Too Big…Or Is The Book Too Small?

Recently, I read two novels that left me chewing over the issue of story size. The two novels were Love On The Run by Katharine Kerr and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Both were absorbing, with characters I cared about and nifty plot twists, ideas to chew on, and interesting locales. In other words, they were respectable novels by competent authors. I enjoyed them, yet each in a different way left me wishing the book had been either longer or shorter.

Love On The Run is the fourth in a series about a paranormal investigator, Nola O'Grady, her sweetheart Ari who is by no means mundane, the various doings of the super-secret agency that employs her, and her family, variously gifted and not always on the right side of the law on this and several other worlds. By the time Love On The Run takes place, we've had a chance to get to know these characters and worlds. The multiplicity of related alternate universes reminded me of some of my favorite early Andre Norton science fiction.

A Discovery of Witches is actually the first volume in a trilogy, but for some reason I did not realize that until I sat down to write this essay. I was thoroughly prepared to enjoy it -- what a delight to begin a story in the research shelves of the Bodleian Library, tracking down and deciphering ancient manuscripts.

SPECIAL GUEST BLOG: Katharine Kerr on Good Prose

Writers and readers both love to discuss, and maybe argue about, what constitutes "good" prose. From the readers' points of view, the definition really comes down to a matter of taste -- at least, that’s the conclusion I usually end up drawing from these discussions.

Some people enjoy complex sentences and unusual words. Some people hate them. Some people hate short sentences and basic vocabulary. Others like them. And so on.

It occurred to me that we might look at the problem from the other side: the writer's point of view. What constitutes good prose? Prose that has the effect upon the reader that the writer intended it to have.

Does the writer want the reader to zip through the story and enjoy it as an entertainment? That will require one style of prose. Does the writer want the reader to experience the story as an immersion into a strange and foreign place and time? That will require another. Is an incident supposed to be funny? Humor demands a certain choice of words. Is the incident supposed to make the reader get all teary-eyed? Then the writer had better avoid that distanced, ironic humor.