The Rule of Cool
Because I’m a person who spends a great deal of my time doing something or other with books, I tend to get lots of book articles in my news feeds. Lots of “## best/unknown books in X genre” from Tor, BookRiot, etc. And I ALWAYS look through them, because “you haven’t heard of this” is a surefire way to get me interested. Ask anyone who knew me in high school how big my obscure musical soundtrack collection was. Go ahead. Ask.
It was one of these lists that led me to Sibyl Sue Blue, by Rosel George Brown. I was immediately on board because of the cover alone.
“How can you walk through another person’s life and not break things?”
“They pushed their way through the crowd to Kally, who sat on the floor sunk in his black corduroy overalls as though they were a house in which he lived alone.”
“She remembered how when she was a teen-ager she always used to think she was in love before dinner, and found out after a good meal that really she’d only been hungry. ”
I tend to run hot and cold on vintage books. Which is surprising, seeing as my crazy quarantine purchase was a mystery lot of 20 vintage historical romance novels, which is not a genre I regularly read. I’ve read 2 of the 20 so far, and they are a lot of fun. But even comparing the 90s to today, writing styles and reader styles have changed so much. Maybe I’m the only one, but I often have a hard time following older books. Something about the pacing, they often seem to go faster than my slug brain is ready for.
Which brings us back to Sibyl Sue Blue. It was short, hectic, and quite a bit of fun, despite some dated language here and there. Which is to be expected in a book published in 1966. Sergeant Sibyl Blue is a 40 year old, smokes cigars, loves gin, and works to juggle raising her teenage daughter while tracking down the source of a mysterious virus from another planet. The very first paragraph has her punching an alien where it hurts, which as luck would have it, is the same place it is for human males. Needless to say, I was sold.
A premise like this, to me, is a prime example of the Rule of Cool. As defined by TV Tropes: The limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its awesomeness. The cooler an idea is, the more willing we are to buy into it.
Rule of Cool is a big factor for me when looking at books. (This does come with the caveat, “cool” is subjective, and what I love may not be what you love.) If I read a summary and my first thought is “Oh that’s cool,” consider me in. Things that might have annoyed me about a story will annoy me less if the premise is cool. Anime is great at this, particularly sports anime. Viewers may go into a series knowing nothing about volleyball/karuta/ballroom dancing, but the show makes it all so COOL that you’re binging your way through a season in one sitting.
Some of my favorite recent Rule of Cool reads:
A young boy granted a power from a death god must bring back fallen heroes from the grave to fight for him against the emperor.
A private detective investigates a murder at a magic school where her sister teaches.
Sherlock Holmes’s niece and Bram Stoker’s younger sister team up to solve mysteries in steampunk London.
For me, these concepts just scream of COOL. I’m very hopeful that one day, I’ll be able to write something that will have Rule of Cool charm on readers. My upcoming trilogy might, but I’m still unsure if that’s the right way to pitch it? Something I’ll figure out down the road!
** air guitars away on a skateboard **
