The Sword and Laser discussion

I ran across a Guardian interview with the author, which covers a lot of ground. I shared it in discord and thought it worth sharing here as well. Among other things, it provides the pronunciation for her name, which is not any of the guesses I had.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/art...

I found it very interesting that the "guiding spirit behind the book is Bradley's best-loved writer, Terry Pratchett." Her humor is obviously not the same as Pratchett's but now that it's mentioned I can see the influence. Perhaps also explains in part why there were places this book actually made me laugh out loud, not something I often do when reading with my eyes.

The interview does delve into some of the more serious themes of the book. This stood out to me.

“People never ask refugees, ‘Are you grateful?’ They ask, ‘How grateful are you?’”

Anyway, the full article is well worth reading.

A good read - my favorite quote was the author explaining that you don't really have to worry about the time travel - “The whole thing is just people sitting in different rooms experiencing emotions and bureaucracy.”

That is really apt. I don't care much about time-travel in books one way or another, so I wasn't bothered by the holes some other readers perceived and pointed out in other threads. I let it drift by, as I usually do, and happily read about the people and their feelings and the bureaucracy.

And I just realized I think that article helped make clear for me what always felt 'off' about characterizations of the origins of the novel as "fan fiction of The Terror TV series". Even in the acknowledgements in the book, the author is clear that it was watching The Terror that provided the original 'spark' that led to the book.

I have a decent degree of exposure to fan fiction. I can recall imagining and writing some of my own way back when, though not anything I ever shared. I've read some, though not a huge amount, over the decades once the Internet made it easier for people to share. (Before that people did little 'zines or shared things in person.) My youngest wrote a fair amount of their own and has always read and tried to comment on fan fiction their friends write.

Fan fiction draws on and expands the characters and setting from a work of fiction (book, movie, tv, anime, comics, etc.) And it's generally shared among other fans of whatever work inspired it. Fan fiction about the The Terror (which I've never watched) would have been some sort of continuation or at least connected to the world and events of the TV series and would have been shared mostly with fans of the series. And that didn't feel like it matched this novel, which as far as I can tell shares nothing in common with what I've read about The Terror other than using the same doomed arctic expedition as its launch point.

Basically, Bradly became obsessed with learning about the expedition and Gore in particular and ended up connecting with a different community online, actual polar exploration enthusiasts. She wrote the early bits for them and those were about imagining what it would be like for your favorite explorer to move in with you. (Obviously that was Gore for her.) I think "nerdy literary parlour game," the phrase she uses, is more accurate than "fan fiction" because her actual writing had no connection as far as I can tell with The Terror. The series was just what triggered her obsession with the actual historical expedition.

It's the sort of distinction that probably doesn't matter to most people, but when something feels like a category error or misplaced, it can create an internal sense of dissonance for me. It feels good to have that box placed on the right mental shelf.

Scott wrote: "Fan fiction draws on and expands the characters and setting from a work of fiction (book, movie, tv, anime, comics, etc.) And it's generally shared among other fans of whatever work inspired it. Fan fiction about the The Terror (which I've never watched) would have been some sort of continuation or at least connected to the world and events of the TV series and would have been shared mostly with fans of the series.."

I'm going to weigh in here with my own experiences of fanfic, which it seems have been quite different from yours (possibly a generational thing? idk how old you are -- I'm an age suitable for our previous Laser pick). I have experience of reading, writing, and sharing fanfic via sites such as tumblr and Archive of Our Own (AO3) and of learning about more indirectly via the Rec Center newsletter and discussions on the podcasts Fansplaining and Be the Serpent (both now sadly defunct although the Fansplaining tumblr is still active).

In my experience, there's a lot of fanfic that takes the characters from the original work, and does something completely different with them - very often, picking them up from the original setting and plonking them down in a totally different setting, in much the same way as Gore was plucked from the Arctic and plonked into modern-day London. There are thousands of fanfics that explore characters' interactions with each other and with OCs (original characters) in low-stakes modern settings. Just do a search on AO3 for 'coffee shop AU' [alternate universe] if you don't believe me. You'll find lots of fanfics with a vibe similar to the first three-quarters of Ministry of Time.

Also, in large part precisely because of the tagging and search functions of AO3 allow you to search cross-fandom for things like 'coffee shop AU', there are loads of people who read fanfic without being fans of the original work -- or even experiencing it at all! I myself have read and enjoyed fics of Transformers, Stargate:Atlantis and Person of Interest because they were recommended on the Be the Serpent podcast, although I've never seen any of the original works.

So, to me, the majority of Ministry of Time feels *very* fanfic-esque. The tropes of fish out of water, recovery from trauma, slow-burn romance, intense character focus and slice-of-life story with a more serious high-stakes story going on somewhere in the background... this all feels very much like countless fanfics I've read. To be clear, this is not a Bad Thing - I love fanfic and I'm happy that it's finally getting the attention it deserves.

Interesting. Much of the time I would look for it was much older. These days I mostly just check out things other people refer to me. As I noted in passing, a lot of my exposure to the current environment of fan fiction is through things told and described to me by my youngest and friends. And their interests mostly have revolved around expanding and exploring the worlds of whichever characters they like, not too dissimilar from the sort of fan fiction I had in mind.

And I have nothing at all against fan fiction. I've always enjoyed it when well done. It just didn't feel like the right category to me. Now that you mentioned it, I do think I recall people discussing 'coffee shop au' in the past. But it's not something I've ever explored and the past mention of it didn't stick in my head.