I have been asked to make a showing at Nerd East, the Larp fair at Durham on 9th June 2012. There may be some manner of speechifying. The speech may include recycled elements from my Picocon speech. See how green I am? I'm constantly trying to reduce my inspiration footprint. Anyway, I shall be there, and I shall be happy to sign stuff, answer questions, receive drinks and the like.

After that I am one of a host of names at Edge Lit on 14th July 2012 at Derby Quad. No idea what I'm doing there but ditto the signing and the questioning and also probably the drinking.

I have another short story on the way into print, too. I'm not a prolific ghost story writer, but I'm very proud of my creepy little piece, Not a Cat Person, which will be coming out soonish in Newcon Press's Hauntings anthology. I'm also working my way through their back catalogue at the moment. I can strongly recommend Ian Watson's new collection, Saving for a Sunny Day.

Finally, there's this: Waterstones and Amazon are exploring a new Book Coprosperity Sphere . I will freely say that I honestly don't know enough of the ins and outs of the business to make any comment as to whether this will work for Waterstones (or Amazon, but one kind of feels that Amazon will be selling books to the cockroaches long after we're gone (1)), or what other considerations are going to rear their heads, but as I am very much in favour of high street bookshops, I do hope this means that we might have the last chain left for a little longer. It's also potentially a step towards the strategy that was being talked about at last year's Fantasycon, the idea that you could buy the physical book at a store and get the ebook in the same purchase (meaning you could have your library and home, in pleasing paper, and also cart it around conveniently, without having to buy everything twice). Now this current deal is a long way from that, but what it is, is infrastructure that might conceivably lead to it. Anyway, we'll see.

(1) And you know me well enough by now to know that I genuinely mean it in a good way.

Did a couple of decent panels — the first was "not another f*cking elf" where the four of us had no moderator whatsoever, and ran everything quite satisfactorily as a socialist commune. This explored a lot of good ground on fantasy tropes, and especially the different way that elves and other races are used — we got onto orcs, too. I contended that there was little ground between Tolkien's "orcs" and the lower class "oiks" but Paul Cornell stuck up for Professor T on that one. There was also a suggestion that orcs have now migrated to the noble savage archetype and everyone wants to show how lovely and misunderstood they are, which does seem to be a think with orcs.

Sunday's panel was diversity in fantasy — we managed to cover gender, sexuality and race under the able helming of Mark Charan Newton. As someone pointed out after, we didn't look at disability, which was true and a shame. Still, much was said, and the general conclusion is that the genre is at least having a go at broadening its demographic — both in terms of characters, authors and hopefully readership.

Also got to see some other fun stuff — nice SF panel — "is SF dead", which as was pointed out contrasted nicely with last year's "has SF taken over the world". Next year: "SF has risen from the grave."

On the subject of SF, I would like to think that I have in some small way diversified myself into that sister-genre by getting a (very) short story accepted for the Nature magazine Futures section — this prints brief stories dealing with a speculative treatment of real science, and I'm very chuffed to have something accepted (hint — it wasn't the first time I tried it). No idea what issue it'll be in, but the story is called "21st Century Girl" and more details as and when. I've submitted a few other stories to various anthologies that have been on the hunt, and so crossed fingers for some more shorts news in upcoming months.

Last up: I have now registered formally as an author on Goodreads. This appears to have a kind of forum-like thing in its Q&A sessions, and so I will probably set something like that up. For now I'm busy giving good ratings to all my books. Yes, even that one.

At 2, after a rather hurried and mostly liquid lunch, we had the Fantasy Clarke Awards. Now these weren't really the Clarke Awards, or not yet. Readers will be aware of those rather august accolades for science fiction, and this panel was a sort of trial run, in which Niall Harrison moderated(/manhandled) judges Nic Clarke, David Hebblethwaite, Erin Horakova, Edward James and Juliett E McKenna (for real this time), as they considered five fantasy works with the same high standard of critical eye that the Clarkes are noted for. Up for grabs were Grimwood's The Fallen Blade, Abercrombie's The Heroes, Oyeyemi's Mr Fox, Elliott's Cold Fire, Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and, to my great delight, Frances Hardinge's Twilight Robbery — a particular favourite of mine. Analysis was erudite, and all the books had their champions, with Joe inching out the rest by a hair to claim the prize. The judges were aware that a single hour's panel was insufficient to do the works justice, but the exercise is hopefully due to be repeated next year (crossed fingers for The Air War maybe?)  and the chief message I carried away is that a wide variety of fantasy books can be considered side by side and given a full and fair consideration.

Next Panel was "You got your robot elf sex in my SF" on the topic of romance in Sci-fi and genre generally (Tanya Brown moderating Gail Carriger, Francis Knight, Adam Roberts and Justina Robson) For pure usefulness in my own writing, this was a cracking panel and it's simply not a topic I've seen discussed and dissected in this sort of detail before. After that I caught Adam Christopher reading a segment from his upcoming Seven Wonders, and then ended up in the bar again. By this time I was starting to come a bit unstuck with two mostly sleepless nights and no natural light for something like 48 hours, and everything was going kind of Fear and Loathing in las Vegas(3), with a distinct feeling of unreality to the entire proceedings. The BSFA awards were particularly surreal, for reasons that other sites have already trodden, but suffice to say that Paul Cornell won the short fiction with his Copenhagen Interpretation, I got to see David Langford (4) when he accepted the non-fiction award for the SF Encyclopaedia with Graham Sleight, and Christopher Priest gave a very elegant acceptance speech after The Islanders won long fiction, which I think to some extent defused the Priest/Clarke contretemps that had been mentioned on a number of panels up to that point.  Nic Clarke then managed to rescue me and got me out of the hotel for a mass Chinese meal.

So far, the closest I had got to achieving goal [3] (the titular Talk with George) had been on Saturday night, when I gave him directions on how to find his own fan party (5). On Sunday evening, though, feeling detached from time and space and quite sozzled, I did at last manage a very pleasant and convivial chat with Mr Martin and his wife on a variety of subjects, some of which I can even remember. I was also bold enough to press on him a copy of Empire in Black and Gold, which he took in good spirits. I will say that, for someone who is arguably the most successful fantasy writer currently on the go, and with the TV business as well, he is a man still very much in touch with his fans and his readers.

OK, wrapping up, Monday was Paul Cornell day, or mostly. I caught some of his interview, but then had to head off for my own panel, "Epic legends of the Hierarchs" on writing big ol' fantasy series — Nic Clarke (6) moderating me, Mr Martin, Sophia McDougall and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Some interesting talk on logistical problems, maps, plots and the like, and I acquitted myself passably well. After that I did catch Paul C again reading excerpts from his upcoming London Falling (former working title Cops and Monsters) which frankly sounds fantastic — but decidedly a step further into horror territory than I'd thought. Last up before Justina and I got the hell out of Dodge was the closing ceremony, which was mostly given over to thanking the host of people who had made the con happen — and I am quite in awe of the programming, logistics and technical organisation that went into what is essentially an "amateur" event — everything was just about flawless in execution so hats off to the lot of them. Also at the closing ceremony, and something that must be seen to be believed, was this, which I leave to speak for itself.

And we're done, finished the write up just in time to naff orff to Alt Fiction in Leicester on Saturday, so possibly see you there.

(1) Among other things — and though is but new entered into our tale, believe ye me, she hath verily her role to play, before ye ende, to get onto the language in fantasy panel a bit early.

(2) And for some reason I am also thinking Juliet McKenna, although it's surely impossible that she was also here. Sunday was when the precise borders of reality started fraying a bit, although it seems unreasonable that I was seeing phantom Juliet E McKennas where McKennas there were not.

(3) But without the lizards, which was a shame.

(4) David's review column, Critical Hits, in the old White Dwarf magazine, was a huge guide to me in recommended reading when I was younger.

(5) Anyone who knows my sense of direction is welcome to gasp in horror now. He did get there, though, so I must have been having a good day.

(6) If anyone is playing the veteran level Cornell/McKenna/Clarke drinking game you probably want your liver looking at by now.

Up bright and early to the sort of cooked breakfast that seemed mostly made by people to whom cooking isn't their first language, save for the mushrooms, which were so remarkably good that I can only assume there was one ancient Zen mushroom savant on the kitchen staff. Panel at 10am — "Sufficiently advanced magic" (Marcus Gipps of Gollancz moderating Stephen Deas, Juliet E McKenna, Chris Wooding, Shana Worthing and me) — lots of different viewpoints from people whose worlds had more or less tech, and very different types of magic. Mention of David Brin's The Practice Effect and Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. Juliett and I are both going similar places with our fiction — she's just finished a cycle of books involving social revolution and the overthrow of a feudal/monarchic system, for example. This clashed with what sounded like a very interesting panel on AI chaired by Paul Cornell.

After that, caught "How Pseudo do you like your Medieval" (Anne C Perry, Jacey Bedford, Anne Lyle, Juliet McKenna (1) and George RR Martin), discussing history and fantasy, followed by another (with, for bonus points, Juliet McKenna and Paul Cornell) on gender parity in convention panels. After that I was able to badger Bella Pagan of Tor into springing for lunch. I made the Wild Cards panel, with Mr Martin introducing two of the newest writers to be invited into the world's longest-running shared world (David Anthony Durham and Paul Cornell) and eventually ended up signing some books, some programmes and an enormous polystyrene monkey.  That evening was the fan party of the Brotherhood Without Banners, Mr M's followers, into which I snuck alongside Joe Abercrombie, Sarah Pinborough and David Durham, and at which a third instance of general [3] fail (see last post) occurred. I did draw some raffle tickets though.

(1) Who was giving Paul Cornell a run for his money in the ubiquity stakes.

Arrived lunchish Friday in the company of Justina Robson, fellow Leeds-based writer, and was treated to sumptuous lunch by my agent at MacDonalds (3) where we discussed The Plan. He and his minion have both read the draft of War Master's Gate, and they are in favour, which is just as well. I didn't make the fight demonstration (fail on [2]) but did squeak into "Pushing the Boundaries of Genre" (Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz moderating Paul Cornell, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Sophia McDougall and Robert Reddick.) This was my first sight of Paul at the con, who was not only one of four guests of honour, but was also giving awards, nominated for awards, and filling in  as a volunteer setting up and taking down and generally being sufficiently indispensable that it was a wonder they didn't it COrNell and just have done.

Missed the "Archery on screen" (fail [2]) but did at least tick [1] by making the launch of Newcon Press' Dark Currents anthology, for which I contributed a story, and got to meet Ian Watson in the flesh, a writer whose own short fiction has had a big influence on me.  From that I got to the genre "Just a Minute" (Justina Robson, Tricia Sullivan, Jo Walton and Donna Scott, chaired by Paul Cornell (4)) which was just as good (5) as the SFX version, and is apparently now a regular feature of the con circuit.

There was a picture circulating on Facebook a while back of "people you see wandering about conventions" and it's quite true, hence, at some late hour, the man himself does wander on into the bar and I do get as far as buying him a drink before the awestruck fanboy social inadequate part of me ensures that I then fail to make any impression or say anything of any use, so that's the first (of several) fails on [3]. By that time, after hooking up with Sophia McDougall and David Anthony Durham (both of whom I met at previous conventions) and a host of others  — and FYI, the cliché is true, and late on in the bar is absolutely the place to hang around if you wish to meet an author, editor, agent or similar — I make the call to go to bed at around 1pm, because I've a panel first thing on Saturday.

I am reliably informed that, presumably about 5 minutes after I've headed off, George turns up and spends until the small hours generally passing the time with whoever remains in the bar at that point. So that's fail number 2.

To be continued…

(1) Bonus points for spotting the Jonathan Coulton title I'm shamelessly stealing.

(2) Or, let's be honest, writer to Writer.

(3) You see how we celebrities live?

(4) It's like a drinking game

(5) I think I entered some kind of contract with Sarah Pinborough and Joe Abercrombie about using other comparative terms.

My own appearances at the con are:

Friday 6th — 5pm — room 12 — I'll be at the launch party for Newcon Press's Dark Currents anthology, which includes my story "The Fall of Lady Sealight" and a whole lot else by a great many very talented writers.

Saturday 7th — 10am — Royal B&C (1) — panel: Sufficiently advanced magic, with me, Stephen Deas, Juliet E Mckenna, Chris Wooding and Shana Worthen, moderated by Marcus Gipps

Saturday 7th — 9pm — Room 41 — Great big mass author signings, at which I shall be somewhere. Bring your own books or buy them from whoever is there that sells books (Forbidden Planet should hopefully have some).

Monday 9th — 1pm — Royal B&C — Panel: Epic Legends of the Hierarchs, with me, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Sophia McDougall and George RR Martin, moderated by Nic Clarke.

.

.

Other items that grabbed my attention include:

Friday 6th — 1pm — Room 38 — fight demonstration with Jo Playford (2)

- 3pm — Commonwealth (3) — Archery in fantasy TV and film (hopefully with special mention of Hawke the Slayer) with Mike Shevdon

- 6.30pm — Commonwealth — Just a Minute moderated by Paul Cornell, with Pat Cadigan, Donna Scott, Tricia Sullivan and Jo Walton.

Saturday 7th — 4pm — toss up between Fantastic Landscape panel or a talk on Unsolvable Problems in Mathematics. Seriously — that is actually useful research for me, for a story idea I'm kicking about.

- 5pm — Commonwealth — Wild Cards panel, hosted by George RR Martin

Sunday 8th — 11am — toss up between Meet the New King panel, or The Fantasy of William Shakespeare panel (4)

- 2pm — Room 41 — A Fantasy Clarke Award panel, which should be particularly interesting following recent media developments.

- 3pm — Commonwealth — You got your Robot Elf Sex in my SF panel, with Justina Robson and Adam Roberts, among others

- 4.30pm — Royal B&C — Adam Christopher reading

- 5pm — Commonwealth — The Nature of Heroism panel, with GRRM (5) and Joe Abercrombie, among others

- 8pm — Room 38 — The Death of the Author. Either a panel or a thrilling game of Russian Roulette, not sure which.

And basically a whole lot more. I've highlighted all the items I want to see, and basically my schedule is at least 60% highlighter. And need to find time for schmoozing and drinking also. Going to be a good weekend, I hope.

(1) The name of the room, apparently.

(2) May not be in time to make this one, sadly, see how I go. Also — I sincerely hope that "room 38" is not just, y'know, hotel room 38, cos that is likely to run out of space real quick.

(3) Also, hopefully, the name of the room.

(4) Presumably not focusing solely on that one with the three nuns and Will Kempe dressed as the queen.

(5) I can call him that, right?

There is a schedule up now for Alt Fiction, which has some good-looking stuff in it. It's an event I've much enjoyed in past years, and looking good this year too.

Somewhat late with this one, but I have a blog post up at the Tor blog here where I basically have a further rant about world building and Shadows of the Apt in particular. Anyone at Picocon may recognise some of this, as it was written at the same time as some of my talk. It's not the "how to write a generic fantasy epic" though, although tbh that went down quite nicely so I may yet recycle it.

Finally I am very excited about the upcoming launch of Dark Currents (1) from Newcon Press — it's got one hell of a lineup of writers behind it, and my own story, The Fall of Lady Sealight, is one I'm particularly fond of. Click on the link and you can pre-order a copy too. It's going to get its launch at Eastercon, so that's probably a good chance to get copies signed.

(1) No dried fruit jokes, please.

Justina Robson and Tricia Sullivan gave a pair of very thought-provoking speeches about science fiction writing, where they wanted to take it and what directions other demands were pulling them in. Justina had a graph, and Tricia had a musical analogy. My own talk about perceptions of epic fantasy also went down very well, including the "how to write a generic fantasy epic" comedy spots, which were notably less tumbleweedy than I had feared. I will say I spent 2 hours the previous evening frantically re-writing huge sections of it, that turned out to be time well spent.

I am very grateful to Picocon organisers/staff/volunteers, as we writers were well and truly taken care off (1) throughout.

Nice also to hook up with Juliet McKenna and Paul Cornell — it's a convention that former guests tend to come back to as punters in later years, which pattern I may well follow.

And there was a quiz, and it was extremely tough. Even with Paul on side we scraped third place, and that was with a number of questions rather graciously featuring our own works.

But perhaps the most glorious result of Picocon for me was:

KNITTED TISAMON!

For which I have to thank Rosemary Warner a.k.a. Pufferfish, and I am still absolutely bowled over by this.

(1) Not in a Mafia way.

Quick event update: this weekend I’m guest of honour at Picocon alongside serious SF authors Justina Robson and Tricia Sullivan, and am going to have to make some sort of speech. I have no fricking idea what I’m going to say, a state of affairs that may persist until I stand up in front of people and open my mouth, unless I actually get down to it.

Picocon is run by Imperial College, London, but is open to all. I will be happy to sign stuff, and there are some panels as well.

I have given in and shelved my first Larp event of the season to pitch in at Eastercon, which this year has something of an epic fantasy flavour. I will be on a couple of panels, and maybe signings etc. I have been promised the chance to be in the same room as George R.R. Martin.

Within a week of that there’s Alt Fiction in Leicester, and Fantasycon 2012 looming at some point beyond which, going by the flagship picture on the site, is apparently being held in the sea. Busy year.

But I get ahead of myself. There was another panel that I want to have a look at. This was "It's not a story, it's a map!" and was about world-building, ish. Tagline was "does fantasy place world-building over character", but it did get hung up on maps as my earlier one did on elves. Although chair Juliet McKenna did try and put a pro-map case, with some support from David Tallerman and Ian Whates, there was a lot of anti-map sentiment from Gaie Sebold, Sam Sykes and especially China Mieville. I do a lot of maps, as you know, and I'd have had some pro– stuff to put in. To be honest, maps are a bit of a side-argument, but I would propose:

- on the "show don't tell"(1) basis, maps are a useful tool for the reader, in any story that travels around or involves multiple states/nation/etc. However:

- Maps that don't have anything off the edge of them so that the whole world is contained therein are bad maps, and will work against the imagination of the reader (and the writer)

- Maps that could serve as the contents page because every conveniently distinct little country is going to get a visit are also bad maps, and indeed such a howling cliché of epic fantasy that they get a derogatory mention in Diane Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

Basically, maps are a tool subordinate to story etc (and indeed subordinate to world-building, see below) but a useful tool nonetheless, a reference and resource for the reader and (when you get long enough through a series and need to check your own consistency) the writer as well.

And that's most of what I wanted to say about maps. You don't have to have them. A stand-alone book doesn't need them as much as a series might because a series likely has much more legging it about the place. A book with a stationary setting such as a city doesn't need a map in the same way that one with multiple locations and/or hoofing it around might. I stand by my maps. I also confess to using an entire map in The Sea Watch as a mean-spirited piece of plot misdirection. Very meta of me.

So much for maps, and it's unfortunate that "maps" turned up in the title because much of what followed kind of got tangled up in the idea of a map as the symbol of all that is unholy. However what I really noted was something China raised about halfway through: His stance was that the "reality" of a fantasy world stops at the page — that asking "what happened next?" or "was there really a ghost?" or whatnot is a meaningless question, because what the author wrote is all that s/he wrote. His position was that it's a pointless exercise to look for the "reality" of the fantasy world beyond the author's intentions.

So, here we go. Disagreeing with Mr M is sort of entering an ass-kicking contest with a centipede (2) — and I wasn't on the panel so who knows what I might have said at the time? — but if I understood his point correctly, I disagree with it.

I think that readers are absolutely entitled to ask, "What happens next?" or "who lives over the hill." I think that putting this question in the map debate is problematic, because it leads on to "setting too much in stone" arguments. I myself, speaking solely for my personal preference, like worlds that extend beyond the story, and maps that extend beyond those locations the story visits. As China noted, M.John Harrison  - a writer that he and I both greatly respect — has kicked very hard against the mere idea of world-building. I'm not sure if he uses the phrase in the same way I do. In his succinct and elegant essay (quoted here and elsewhere) he feels the practice is an offence to writers and readers. For me, story and world have unfolded in complementary tandem, and the world beyond the boundaries of the story — as shown in chance mentions, nods, remarks or the rumoured origin of a stranger passing through — has been instrumental in inspiring the story's further development. Does that mean that I let plot and character suffer as I fetishise over the world?  I would say no. I would say that they are the richer and the more interesting for having a rounded world to be set in. Those fantasy series that I truly do not respect are generally those that don't take the time to build the world, but simply cobble it together from stock concepts and then just drive a similarly ill-shod plot through them. It's like the elves — too many writers use fantasy standards like elves and the like as a crutch that means they don't have to think about the world: Who lives in this nicely square country? It's elves. That's fine then. Everyone knows what elves are like. Nature, bows, interminable poetry.

Isaac dan der Grimnebulin in (of course) Perdido Street Station, trying to solve the problem of flight for his client Yag: "Well, first of all there's the problem of getting hold of insect wings big enough. The only insects big enough already aren't going to just hand'em over. And I don't know about you but I don't fancy fucking off into the mountains or wherever to ambush an assassin beetle. Get our arses kicked." To me, that is world-building. That is the essence of world-building, and those books (and all of China's books) are full of that kind of intricate, immersive detail. I'm not expecting there to be a painstakingly detailed place on the map that says "here be assassin beetles". There should always be something off the map, because that's how a world works (see how the map debate colours the wider argument?). I'm similarly not expecting whatever author to have a 4,000 word essay on the life cycle of the assassin beetle or to be able to give any more details than are on the page if they don't want to, but it is the mention of those far places, those rumoured things, that pushes back the boundaries of the world, that gives the story itself a reality that it would otherwise lack. And yes, I know I've lost the reality argument barring serious psychotic imbalance, because of course these places are not objectively real. But they have a reality beyond the page: they have a reality in the writer's mind, and the readers'. The writer must not (as Harrison says) restrict the reader by making too much concrete, but the writer also has a duty to draw the reader, to tantalise, to hint, to feed the imagination. That, as I'm sure the counterargument would run, is what character and story are there for. But world-building, as I think of the phrase, is a part of that. In providing a world that has the blush of life to it you show the reader that this is a vehicle worth exercising the imagination on. You encourage it. It is the world that the writer has not given that kind of thought to that cripples the imagination, because it has no depth.

And the interaction between world and story is complex. And over-planning is going to be restrictive — the world is likely to evolve like that "fog of war" you get in strategy games, so that the map (sigh) is revealed as your characters move around the world (which is why my later books have new maps).Yes, the story should not be to showcase the world. That is exactly cart-before-the-horse — or authorial masterbating, as Sam Sykes put it. However, a well-considered and consistent world showcases the story. And if you have that world, which grants your characters breadth and history and surrogate reality, then your readers will ask "what happened next?" I'm not going to go into detail about long serii like Shadows of the Apt needing more of that kind of stuff, but I think it's true just because writer and reader inhabit the same world for so much longer. Consistency and the suspension of disbelief require you to ensure that it all fits together.

And as far as suspension of disbelief goes, I feel that a fundamental part of reading a story — and most especially a fantasy story — is entering into a world that is presented as having a reality that stretches beyond what is written (3). On a literalistic interpretation, of course it need not have. The author can create that story and have no thought to anything beyond those words, or even be vehemently denying any "extended universe" — to use such a horrible phrase — with every word that gets typed. To expect the reader to somehow have that in mind as they read, though? It would be like interrupting a play half way through to show the audience backstage and see the actors smoking and going to the loo. To expect the reader to stop when you stop, at that final dot of punctuation, and never ask "what happens next" is to expect too much — and to expect something that would be actively damaging to the reader's appreciation of the story. Both China and Mr Harrison prompt that "What happens next?" question from me in all sorts of different ways. Harrison's Viriconium, in its own shifting and degrading detail, is fascinating. And yes, it changes story to story — it cannot possibly be mapped — but that change is in itself part of the fluid setting (perhaps I will be shot if I say 'world') that Harrison is presenting (see my references to it in my recent post here). That very uncertainty in the characteristics of Viriconium is an integral part and point of the story sequence (4). It is a valid reading. What do I say if Mr H tells me it is not a valid reading? I don't know, but the debate on author and authority (5) is one that all literature has fought over for a long time.

(1) Do not start twitting me with the anti-"show don't tell" thing. I know, it's not a universal rule, but similarly, sometimes it's better to show. The geographical relationship between places can be one of those times. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

(2) a buff, good-looking and incredibly erudite centipede.

(3) Yes, I'm sure there are works out there that very explicitly don't do this. My gut feeling, no doubt born of my ignorance, is that they will be reaching for a part of literature where art elbows out readability.

(4) So a follow-on point is that you can't expect every book to be a Viriconium. The fluid reality of the stories was, often explicitly, what the stories were about. If you start from a standpoint of "no reality to any story" then they actually lose much of their impact.

(5) Not one of Austen's better works. Too self-referential.