Good fiction vs. Wild fiction

I dislike Harry Potter. I will give you a few minutes to stone me now.

Like I said before, and will probably keep mentioning throughout the life of this blog, I like everything that transpires intelligence and creativity. There is, however, a common misunderstanding about what intelligent creativity is. Imagine the following conversation:

Guy 1: "I have an idea for a video with a flying spaceship"
Guy 2: "Cool, what kind of spaceship?
Guy 1: "One that travels at the speed of light"
Guy 2: "How about if it transforms into a magic flying lion?"
Guy 1: "Yes, one that shoots lasers from his eyes!"
Guy 2: "And can teleport!"
Guy 1: "And disappear!"

This is not creative. It's pure random. As I said before, people tend to think that to be original, you have to get as further away from reality as possible. A magic flying lion that shoots laser from his eyes is way further from the real world than a spaceship that reaches the speed of light, but it is in no way more creative. You can add literally any ability to the lion, and it's the fact that no rules were established regarding what abilities it can have that makes it such an effortless job. There's no intellectual work in making something up in a universe with no limitations as to what you can create; the real creative work comes from using the resources you have within a given set of limits - that's something your brain will have to work on, something you have to dedicate your brainpower to.
Picture it like throwing pebbles into a lake. How hard is it if all I ask you to do is hit the water? It's not hard. You can't really brag about it - "Hey, I was able to hit water with a tiny pebble!". It's something else completely different if I ask you to hit a floating bucket in the middle of the lake. Now that deserves credit and bragging rights. You could boast about it all day and all I'd say is "It's true, I saw it".

That's what I hate about Harry Potter. There are no apparent rules. For starters, too many spells look like all they do is push something or someone away. Then there is a new spell in every movie that for some reason no one thought about earlier, even though it would have been extremely helpful if they did. But this is not where the lack of rules is most evident: apparently, there is an evil spell that kills you instantly. That's right, it's like a bullet but in magic terms. I understand that the good guys can't use dark magic or they'll be corrupted, but if the bad guys can create virtually any harmful effect with their dark magic, why can't the good guys create whatever they want as long as it's defensive? For example: Voldemort (I can't believe Blogger doesn't mark that word as incorrect) shows up with his instant kill spell, that in the very creative Harry Potter nomenclature would be called something like Instantius Killius - at this point, why hasn't anyone thought of something like Impenetrabilius Shildus? - an absolutely impenetrable shield, in case you didn't get it from the amazingly creative name I thought of. If there is no rule as to what effects can or cannot be created by magic, than it's just like throwing pebbles at the lake trying to hit water. Wherever it lands is fine, just like Harry Potter concepts! The author's creative thought process mustn't be very far from the dialog I wrote in the beginning of the post. "Talking trees? Sure why not" (Or is that Lord Of The Rings?).

This is partly the reason why I much prefer science fiction to general magic and fantastic fiction - the existence of rules. In the case of sci-fi worlds, the rules of science, or at least believable science. It's OK if there's a time machine in a sci-fi movie because, although it doesn't really exist, there is some theory regarding the possibility of time travel by traveling at speeds faster than light. Take Avatar for example: despite all the flaws it had, I still enjoyed the movie very much, partly because it had an amazing (and amazingly credible) explanation for what seemed to be the alien deity - an explanation that resembled the construction of the human brain itself, and for those who are interested in cognitive science, made "the upload/download of personalities and memories into a tree" (watch the movie!) something believable.

The example I always pull out of my pocked in fantasy vs sci-fi arguments is the camouflage technology presented in Harry Potter and Ghost In The Shell, one of my favorite movies of all time (note to self: review this movie later on). In Harry Potter, as you may know, it's an invisibility cloak that you just have to cover yourself with. Like before, no background explanation (how do you find it after storing it in a drawer? What do you see when you open the drawer? The content of the drawer under it?).
With Ghost In The Shell, as expected, it's much more sophisticated, and you can see that someone really lost some time and mental effort to perfect it. It's called thermoptic camouflage, and just from the name you can infer that it will hide whatever you want from optic and thermal radiation (the visible and infrared spectrum). And because technology is never flawless, the concealing isn't 100% perfect and will flicker on occasions such as bullet impacts and the like.
Now, of course that type of advanced camouflage is still fiction. But research on metamaterial and how to bend light is very real and brings sci-fi closer to reality every day.

How can I compare the detailed creation of the makers of Ghost In The Shell, to the random "water hits" of the Harry Potter series' author? It's very clear to me that one is good fiction and the other is wild effortless fiction.

Skip descriptions

The most common problem reported by those who (at least try to) read "Os Maias" by Eça de Queiroz, is that they can't get past the first 80 or more pages where the author does nothing but thoroughly describing the family house, Ramalhete. Eça is the Portuguese frontman of the artistic movement known as Realism which explains his obsession with describing the house in such a detailed manner that anyone, from reading the book alone, could build the house to match the author's mental image of it exactly.
I wonder, however, if such a long and meticulous description is needed. Take me, someone who read and even liked the book - what exactly do I remember of the Ramalhete? Not much. Almost nothing to be honest. The best I can do is attach to my memory of this house a feeling of austerity typical of monasteries or old boarding schools run by nuns. I remember it silent and abandoned. When inhabited, I remember the insides being overdecorated, almost cluttered, with many fancy objects of the Portuguese higher classes.
Now, is this true about the house? Maybe not All I care is that's what I pictured in my mind throughout the book and even now, years later.  I don't remember what Eça described, what objects, window panes or flower vases. Cracking floors or wallpapers. Yet, in my mind, the image of this house is strangely vivid and realistic. If Eça had just used one paragraph to describe the house like I did here, it would have been enough. He needed only to have said "The house is huge and it looks like a boarding school run by nuns. Dark brooding shadows hover over it and kids don't dare to jump those walls". There. Whatever happens inside, my mind can create images that are perfectly sufficient to let the story unroll peacefully. Horribly incomplete images, but perfectly sufficient.
The truth is, the first adjectives are enough when you're reading. After a certain point, your brain is already a step ahead and if the description stops, you don't really need more. And when it doesn't stop (as with "Os Maias", where it seems to never stop), you are very likely to not memorize whatever comes next. Your self-made initial image, however, you might remember all your life.
It's like our eyes and their blind spot, right in the middle of your field of vision, where the optic nerve is. Your eye can see everything except for that little spot in the middle, but what one eye misses, the other one can see, and it's easy for your brain to compose a full picture of what's in front of you. But when you close one eye, you don't notice anything missing in the middle... (you can read about and test that here) Why? Because your amazing brain is filling in that gap for you, according to what's around that spot. It analyzes the surroundings and fills the blind spot with a color/pattern close enough to fool your perception (a mental photoshop clone/stamp tool). And it's sort of the same when you read... Take characters... authors frequently go through very creative efforts to make characters seem real by describing their structure, hair color or facial features. On any book you are reading at the moment, how many of those do you remember about the characters? But don't you feel like you have a very clear and accessible image of that character in your mind?
Well, this image we have isn't clear at all, it's very very incomplete, and so are the memories we have of almost everything and everyone. It's obvious if you try to draw one of your memories with detail.

I'm certain today that our brain works with the minimum effort, using just enough resources to keep you entertained and oblivious to his methods. There are many ways to make this evident, not only by inspecting our memories and how detailed they are. I hope I have the time to go through a few of them in the future.