JustinCognito on Dec 4th 2009 at 12:27:30 PM
Page Type: Trope
A particular form of the Fallen Creator that seems especially common in the sci-fi fandom. A weird blend of Protection from Editors, Author Tract and Creator Breakdown, it typically affects prominent creators with a long string of hits and personal views that may be considered outside the norm (a common occurrence within sci-fi). Thing is, those views which may have been lightly peppered throughout works before hand, start coming to the forefront. All the time. To the point where there are entire books that basically say, "Hay guys here's what I think about socialized health care!"
The Brain Eater, a term coined on the old Usenet sci-fi boards, can be a strange and intricate phenomenon. If someone has, from the start, created work that takes a certain tack in a political direction (like, say, China Mieville), then they've always been there. The Brain Eater typically arises when a creator has so much influence they can write whatever they want about politics or morality without fear of repercussions from the editors, and typically fill entire tomes on the matter.
Not to be confused with Brain Food.
Examples of this trope include:
- Anne McCaffrey, an example characterized not so much by her works than by her lectures. When asked how two straight male dragonriders could fall in love just because their dragons did, she famously recounted how anyone could turn gay under the right circumstances, as a friend of hers had after an... encounter... with a tent peg.
- Orson Scott Card started tracking this way with essays about how gay marriage was a sham and homosexuals were the products of childhood abuse. Then came Empire, which was all about liberal terrorists attacking conservative military interests. Mind you, it ended in a Golden Mean Fallacy Aesop about how extremists ruin debate and a good middle needs to be found... but this middle was being found by an author who thought a reasonable response to the federal government approving gay marriage was armed revolt.
- Piers Anthony. Had a history of sex stuff in his early works, but when it got to the point where one of his books was titled The Color Of Her Panties...
Feedback: 29 replies
John Norman's Gor novels started out as quite good Edgar Rice Burroughs-style adventures, but then his male supremacist views came to the fore and took over the entire series.
Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth Series started out as a pretty entertaining fantasy tale that was both pleasantly familiar and also very fresh. After four successful novels, Goodkind could write virtually anything he wanted- Book 5 was an enormous declaration that democracy was inherently brutish mob-rule (complete with Strawman Political clones of Bill & Hillary Clinton, named Bertrand and Hildemara Chanboor), Book 6 was all about the evils of communism, and Book 8 was essentially a 700 page speech about the folly of subjectivity. All the while, Goodkind included heavy-handed support of Objectivism and some not-so-subtle statements towards the support of Neo-Fascism.
Cerebus?
Two words: Whole Foods.
I feel like this has a lot of overlap with existing tropes. There's Sequelitis, Author Filibuster, Author Tract, Writer On Board, Creator Breakdown, Small Name Big Ego. And when I read the example lists for those tropes, I see the Terry Goodkind Sword Of Truth example listed no less than 4 times. There's also the existing YKTTW for Author Development (or whatever), where the author's beliefs change over time. We need to sort something out here.
Whole Foods[the store] doesn't count since it still offers the same stuff as before, and doesn't have the CE Os' douchey opinions on say, every bag of Organic Wheaty Os. Although that would be funny- 'Organic Wheaty Os- if you eat these, you don't need insurance!'
May be a result of Protection From Editors: the early works might have had most of the more objectionable material filtered out by editing before release.
Once an author becomes more popular and successful, editors might be more reluctant to change too much in fear that the author might pack up and bring his work to another publisher, relying on his earlier successes to sell his work.
Arguably Terry Pratchett; some of his stuff is pro-science and at least suspicious of if not outright against religion, but it was never quite so obvious as in Nation, released after about 30 Discworld books.
This does sound like a bit of a cross between Cerebus Syndrome and Author Filibuster... not sure it deserves its own trope.
For what it's worth, I think this deserves its own trope. It might be a combination of several other tropes, but it's a characteristic and recognizeable one.
Might need a better name, though. If you're not an old usenet-user, you'd probably assume it's got something to do with Zombies...
...Are there seriously no examples on the left side of the street?
Terry Pratchett being pro-science and anti-religion? Seems to fit...
The name just doesn't look right. I just see it getting misused as a type of zombie.
Terry Pratchett getting preachier with every book. Not that it's a bad thing.
Also, South Park. Actually, anything by Matt&Trey
Seemed to happen in reverse with Dr Seuss. Sure, The Lorax and The Butter Battle Book were incredibly preachy, but the man started out writing actual political cartoons. These involved distubingly fervent defense of Soviet Russia and Japanese caricatures that even most other wartime cartoons would regard as a little over-the-top.
HG wells got hit with this hard. post 1900s
HG wells got hit with this hard post 1900s.
Doma Doma -- Not sure about that one. Terry Pratchett may count.
I wouldn't call this The Brain Eater, regardless of where it comes from. It doesn't describe the trope. It sounds like something that Crow and Tom Servo might riff on.
"An author's works get preachier over time, often due to Protection From Editors". Hmmmm...what's a nice, catchy phrase that encapsulates all that?
The trope isn't just a Usenet thing any more, it's leaked out into wider internet usage and that of SF fans. It already exists independent of TVT, so the question is does TVT recognise it or not? There's no such thing as notability, after all.
On Terry Pratchett — considering his circumstances, any reference to him in this context is bordering on extremely bad taste, so I'd be careful about including him as an example, especially when he's always been pro-science and as anti-religion as any average Briton. I think there's an element of 'losing the plot' in the trope that is not yet evident with Pterry.
I don't think the term is defined well here. China Mieville writing fantasy where social issues matter doesn't qualify him for the Brain Eater. The canonical cases are where a respected author runs off the rails. Protection From Editors, sure, but that protection is used to become a clumsy soapbox... or to do dubious things to one's former books. Late Heinlein is the standard example, with excess sex, crossovers, and maybe politics; Asimov trying to unify his Robot, Foundation, and Empire books is a typical other candidate. James Nicoll (who coined the term) mentions L. Neil Smith's The American Zone: Smith's always been heavy-handedly political, but TAZ apparently... oh, let me just link:
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2767029.html?thread=52660149#t52660149
Part of it is that they lose the ability to distinguish between things the author cares about and things the characters should care about. See, for example, The American Zone where the Clintons get bashed, despite not being native to either Libertopian dimension or the protagonists home dimension. I think there's also a rant about a form of baseball nobody in the book plays.
I'd say Tom Paine Maru is just a heavily politicized book, but TAZ sounds Brain Eaterish.
More fundamental to Brain Eater than Protection From Editors may be Loss Of Common Sense, due to success and ego and not listening to anyone say "no, that's a bad idea".
Me, I liked Nation, even if it was rather weird. But he had lots of rather weird books early in his career, before Discworld took over.
How about Filibuster Freefall for the trope title?
I like The Brain Eater as a name for pop-cultural value since it is an actual name for the trope popularized by Memetic Mutation on usenet, etc.
Hmm... maybe Brain Eater Filibuster would work better. How's that for a name?
Brain Eater Filibuster definately works better for me in describing what this trope is about.
The Brain Eater, on the other hand, sounds like the sort of creature that eats brains, discussed in such tropes as Brain Food and Your Brain Wont Be Much Of A Meal.
I see Brain Eater, I go to ^ the same place that poster pointed out.
How about horror authors and their tendancy to start going very... spiritual? For example, Dean Koontz's books keep getting more about gods, dogs, and belief and less about pure horror as time goes by.
Filibuster Freefall sounds like the name most indicative of what the trope describes.
Bump.