Wicked #1 on Kindle's Fantasy Bestseller List

My last two posts (The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Kindling the revolution of reading) are meeting up on on Amazon's Kindle Bestseller list. Maguire's Wicked has been the number one seller in the fantasy section of the Kindle store for at least the past two days. Today it rates #136 on the Kindle's overall Bestseller list.

Three of the top five leaders in science fiction are sf video game tie-ins (Halo and Mass Effect). The remaining top five include Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut, #2) and 1984 (Orwell, #3). Horror is topped by King's Song of Susannah.

What's interesting to me is that Wicked scores in the Kindle Store's overall top 150. The two sf classics are in the top 300. The King book at the top of horror comes in at only #640 overall.

I'll be keeping my eye on how these trends develop.

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

This autumn I can't walk in New York without bumping into some reference to the Wizard of Oz. On Halloween the whole staff of our local bakery dressed as Dorothy and company (the blue grease painted Munchkin was especially impressive). Bus stops in Manhattan are plastered with notices of the Sci Fi Channel's premiere of Tin Man this Sunday. Approachig Times Square, I was overwhelmed by the amount of advertising for the musical Wicked, based on Gregory Maguire's book of the same name (although last week's New York performances weren't held due to the stagehand strike).

There was no question why I suddenly had the urge to read Wicked, the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The reminders of my childhood days in Oz were too in my face to be subliminal.

What I admire most about Maguire's book is its dramatic structure. If a creative writing teacher asked Maguire what his protagonist wanted, I know he could answer in a heartbeat: the Wicked Witch of the West wants forgiveness.

Forgiveness for what? Plaguing Dorothy? No, no. All that Dorothy business comes late in the book- perfectly timed to synchronize events from Baum's well-known tale to the thrilling end of the Witch's personal story. Wicked begins before the Witch's birth, and describes an Oz quite different, I think, from the one Baum envisioned. Yet Maguire selects a few haunting aspects of Baum's mythology, the tiktok mechanical creatures, the ruby slippers, talking animals- and uses them as conduits between his created universe and Baum's.

The question still stands: the Witch wants forgiveness for what? Well, that's kind of the point of the story, getting inside the Witch's oiled green skin and finding and losing sympathy with her as she finds and loses sympathy for herself.

Kindling the revolution of reading

The largest bookstore in the world has announced its own eBook reader, the Amazon Kindle. More than just a device, the Kindle is supported by a huge (and growing) catalog of eBook titles, and by the Whispernet wireless network. Amazon pays your Whispernet connection, allowing you to free wireless shopping and downloading of for-purchase content. Oh, and they threw in free wireless access to Wikipedia, too.

My first glance at the Kindle gave me a tickle in my stomach- I had the sense this was more than a cool gadget, it was a glimpse at the future of how writers get content to readers. Newsweek enthusiastically agreed with me about the Kindle's potential, and as I read Steven Levy's "The Future of Reading" I got more and more excited. Projecting from current trends in blogging and digital media, Levy envisions a future when the book is liberated from its cover. The possibilities are intriguing, and many of them point at changing the role of the author.

Imagine a book that could be instantly updated or corrected- or revised by the author based on reader feedback. Levy predicts serialized novelization (alla Dickens and King's Green Mile)- except that readers would be able to interact with the author in between installments. This situation would create a collaborative environment where the author is no longer master of the universe, but guide through a participatory adventure.

Levy also extrapolates the role of the Kindle's digital annotation system. If readers can upload and share their annotations overlaid on the text of a book, annotations become a forum for disagreeing with the author, whether for fun, or to pose serious political protest. And one of my thoughts based on this model, what about using annotations to create derivative works of art (kind of like playing The Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon) or as a new form of fan fiction?

In one more possible affront to the omnipotence of the author, Levy points out that the Kindle is always connected, always online and ready to connect to other books (not to mention Wikipedia). So if the reader questions something the author wrote, or simply wants a different perspective from another writer, he is just a few seconds' download away from having another author's take at his fingertips.

Will the Kindle ignite a brave new world of authorship and publishing? I can't wait to find out.

Stranger in a Familiar Land

Whenever anyone asks me my favorite science fiction author, I reply: Heinlein.  This gets mixed reactions: from understanding approval to poorly hidden disgust.  Heinlein seems to evoke strong love or hate emotions in his readers.

But love or hate, most of my interlocutors can't mention Heinlein without talking about Stranger in a Strange Land- a book I have never read because it couldn't hold my interest past the first few chapters.

On a quest to understand whether or not books whose first chapters don't grab me are or are not worth reading (see my post Stardust in our eyes), I picked up Stranger in a Strange Land.  I muscled through the first several chapters, and read through to the end.

The result of the experiment was clear.  My feelings toward the book softened a little as I continued to read, got to know the characters and situations better, and to recognize certain Heinlein characteristics that I've come to know and love.  But I never felt a fraction of the warmth toward the book that I did toward Heinlein's Friday (read five times and counting), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, The Number of the Beast or the adventurous sf Heinlein books geared toward children.  

The first few chapters of Stranger in a Strange Land didn't grab me, and neither did the rest of the book.