Category: Science Fiction

career

Remains Still Available

A couple days ago I received my royalty statement on my last novel, Remains.  There are still copies available and if you go directly to the publisher’s site here you can pick one up at a discount.

One of the things I’ve gotten very little of is feedback on my work.  At conventions I’ve spoken to readers about one or another, but aside from the Robot novels, very few people have let me know how they felt about either the Secantis books or this one.

I’m still looking for a new publisher for my work and at present feel pretty cut off.  I thought I’d put it out there that new copies of this book can still be had and eventually I will put up a link here for people to buy what stock I have of the others.

But let me know what you think.

Art

Kage Baker, A Fine Writer, Gone

Following upon the previous post, Kage Baker has passed away.

A few years back she was guest of honor at ConQuest, in Kansas City.  Here in St. Louis some folks at the public library contacted me to see if I could get her to come here to do a presentation.  In my office at the time as president of the Missouri Center for the Book I made inquiries, set up a venue, and actually made arrangements.  A couple of local fans who were at the Kansas City convention volunteered to drive Kage and her sister to St. Louis.  They said they had a marvelous time with her and were pleased to take Kage around the city on tour.

I’d expected more from the library.  Of course I sent around a notice that Kage would be in town, doing a reading, but book events are notoriously hard to get people, even dedicated readers, to attend, and we ended up with a very small gathering in a hall much too large.

Kage was gracious.  We huddled around and she read a pirate story to us and we had a terrific conversation.  It was a fun evening and I came away very impressed by her wit and charm.  That’s kind of a cliched expression, but it was true.  I liked her very much.  I’d already been quite taken by her books, which are the kind of treasures you find from time to time that you come to feel a special warmth for.  Great characters, wonderful storylines, and a terrific premise.

She actually published quite a bit.  There’s plenty there to read and reread.  Nevertheless, there doubtless was much more we will never now discover.  She will be missed by some of us.  She should be remembered.

Art

Celebrity and Unread Books

J.D. Salinger is dead.  Age 91, he died, according to reports, of natural causes, at home, away from the media.

I confess—I never read him.  Catcher In The Rye is one of those touchstone books everyone had read, but not I.  For whatever reason, it never crossed my path.  I remember those bright red covers in high school, sort of wondered about it, but…

We can’t read everything, and some books, if you don’t get to them at a certain period in your life, you might as well not bother.  I doubt Holden Caulfield’s adventures would mean to me now what they would have back then.  Besides, I have a lot of other stuff to read and I know I’ll never get to it all.

Not long ago, the screenwriter Josh Olson (A History Of Violence) did an essay about the problem of time and professionalism.  I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script nails on the head certain issues all professionals face, that of giving time to those seeking validation, unwarranted assistance, or just some kind of reason to feel put upon.  I’ve been guilty myself of violating some of these strictures—wholly unknowing, naively—but, once I realized the mistake, never repeated it.  Some authors get downright strident about this issue and occasionally sound like screaming paranoid misanthropes when they finally come back at someone for not getting it.  See, it’s a no-win situation.  You take the piece and read it and it’s awful, you have a choice—tell the truth or lie.  Either one will get you into trouble and you end up looking like an ass.  But what if it’s good?  You still have a problem.  There is a lot of “good” work out there that will simply never find a publisher or producer.  It ain’t fair, it just is what it is.  There’s not enough room in the world for every piece of work.  So what do you do?  Recommend this person to your agent or publisher?  And what if it continues to be unsalable for any of a hundred reasons that have little or nothing to do with the work in hand?  You don’t run the universe, but if your acquaintance still can’t sell it, you look like either a moron or obviously someone who didn’t sincerely go to bat for the work.

But in my case, this seldom comes up.  I’m one of those who doesn’t sell well most of the time.  It hurts, but there are reasons, and I’m not going to take advantage of people who have no stake in my career to either vent my frustration or climb over other people who may be just or more deserving.  (Maybe I’m a sap for doing that, but you have to live with yourself and shouldn’t do things that might make that difficult.)  But it does apply to reading in general—there just ain’t enough time for all the great books in the world.

Salinger is not likely to be on my shelf anytime before my own demise.

What I don’t get in people like Salinger is the recluse stuff.  I admit, to me it looks like a pose.  He’s never been out-of-print.  Nor has he ever had to write another novel.  I sometimes wonder if he engineered it so that he could just stop when he was on top.  Not a bad strategy, especially if you subsequently can’t finish another book.  But I admit, one of the reasons I’ve always done the work I’ve done has been a secret desire to be in the limelight.  Art of any kind has a bit of performance about it and artists who shun the stage always struck me as insincere.  I’m probably wrong about that and that’s okay.  I just don’t get it myself.

But J.D. Salinger, who published his three volumes way back when and took the accolades to the bank ever since, who eschewed publicity and thereby generated mountains of it, has died, and has done so quite publicly even though he was at home, out of the limelight, with family and friends, apparently getting what he wanted.  Famous for rejecting fame.

In the meantime, another writer, of considerable talent and certainly more productivity, is in the process of dying on the other side of the country, and except for the community of people who love her books will likely die largely ignored by the media and the public at large.  Kage Baker writes science fiction.  Her series of novels and stories of The Company are fine pieces, the first few exquisite disquisitions on history.  She writes fun yarns about characters who are both fully realized and compelling.  No, it’s doubtful any of them would ever become iconic in the way that Salinger’s relatively meager output has, but then I bet Kage’s, page for page, are a lot more fun.

I’m not suggesting that there is any cosmic unfairness going on here.  The Universe doesn’t give a damn about fair.  The very idea is absurd.  I’m just saying that the perverse manner in which our attention gets manipulated often results in overlooking wonderful things.  Such is the case with my own indifference at age 15 or 16 when I should have read Catcher In The Rye, but instead…let me see, that was 1970 or 71, so I would have been reading Heinlein and Clarke, Bradbury and Zelazny, Henderson and Asimov.  (I read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged about that time as well, not to mention a goodly dollop of Dickens, Hugo, Twain, and Hemingway.)  I had my sites set on what I thought were loftier planes of literary territory and this one just…slipped by.

My point?  Only that it makes no sense to regret what you haven’t gotten to, especially if what you have discovered has enlivened your existence and widened your vistas.  If you haven’t read certain books because your were busy reading others, well, good for you.  The only sad thing would be is if you didn’t read certain books because you couldn’t make up your mind which and didn’t read any.  Or, worse, if you didn’t read any because you had no idea there was anything worth while inside them.

But I would urge anyone reading this to go find a Kage Baker novel right now and indulge some wonder.

Absurdity

Avatar

Okay, so I contributed to the James Cameron Self Love Fund and saw AVATAR. Yesterday we went to the 3-D showing (no way I would spend money on the normal view, I can wait for the DVD the way I do with 99% of the movies I see anymore).  I’ve had a day to think about it now and I’ve come to some conclusions, which are hardly profound, but I think worth saying.

Let me say up front that I wasn’t bored.  Visually, this is a stunning achievement.  But that’s what everyone is saying.  It is, in fact, the best 3-D I’ve ever seen.  Often in the past the effect is minimal and the cost in headache high.  This was neither.  And it fully supported the visuals rather than masking mundane or poor image elements.  Pandora, the planet involved, is magnificently realized.  Cool stuff.  Real gosh wow.

The biology is problematic.  You have a wide mix of lifeforms analogous to Earth.  Some big lumbering critters like hippos or rhinoceri that also have features of a dinosaur, and some small things that are clearly wolves, and one big nasty cat-like thing that’s like a sabertooth tiger.  It’s unclear if any of these creatures are mammalian, but it doesn’t matter much.  Dinosaur analogs.  Most of them apparently four-legged.  But the “horses” the natives ride are six-legged, reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ thoats.  How does that play out in evolutionary terms?  Well, maybe that’s a quibble.

How then do you evolve humanoids out of this?  Well, maybe that’s a quibble, too.  This film is not about science on any level, regardless of the few bits of dialogue suggesting there are, you know, scientists, and that there is a studyable cause to any of this.

Because the story, basically, is hackneyed, cynical, and cliched.  I have to hand it to Cameron, he rips off the best.  Strong elements of Anne McCaffery’s Pern in here, as well as Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and a nod to LeGuin (The Word For World Is Forest), Poul Anderson (Call Me Joe), even Joe Haldeman (All My Sins Remembered).  If I dug through my memories I could probably come up with at least half a dozen more clear “borrowings” all mixed in.  There’s not an original idea in any two minutes.

The plotline, however, is straight out of post-colonial self-loathing and Western angst and while there is much to be mined from that pool that is legitimate for drama, its deployment here was purely sentimental button-pushing.  All the triggers were in place, with strong connections to the American Indian, Vietnam, and even a bit of Afghanistan just to bring it up to date.  And it was all thrown into the mix regardless of the logic behind it, which is profoundly flawed.  The few genuinely interesting touches are overhwelmed by the self-righteous indignation Cameron clearly wished to evoke.  We see Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, and Custer’s Last Stand all in service to making a statement about…

The Big Bad Nasty Western Corporate Oligarchy Bent On Destroying Everything To Mine The Last Fragment Of Coal.

In this case, Unobtanium.

Which is somehow worth the cost of an expedition that would bankrupt the planet for the next century.

Which, if we buy the premise that interstellar travel is now practical, would be a pointless exercise in colonial assholery with no upside in terms of profit or prestige, because that one assumption means we’ve solved our energy and resource problems  and the scenario depicted rests upon a 19th Century mindset that would no longer be supportable—just as it pretty much isn’t now.

Which makes AVATAR a rather stupid movie.

Not that there wouldn’t be a way to actually sell this with a little extra work.  With a bit more imagination.  With less desire to beat up on a cultural motif that doesn’t actually need a half-billion dollar 3-D piece of propagandistic hyper sentimentalized derivative schlock movie to achieve.

Very simply posit that these trespassers are rogues.  It could be done in any of a number of ways and actually make a better story.  Not much better, perhaps, but it might be a little less cynical…

Why am I bothering to detail all this?  Because, beautiful as this film is—and it is beautiful—it pisses me off to see so much money dumped into a third-rate piece of hack writing when there are fine artists and projects begging for a little support, who have stories that would benefit the world much more than this dead-end preaching.

End of rant.

Art

Remembering the Future: Why Science Fiction Matters

Recently, I was asked to write a short piece about what science fiction means to me for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  I did and they published it the weekend of Archon 33, October 4th.  Not that anything was wrong with what I wrote, but as this is a topic I think about on and off all the time, I came up with a somewhat different version and, in some respects, a better version, which I couldn’t get in on time.  So here it is.
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We seldom realize what an amazing time we live in. Every time I see someone flip open a cell phone, I get a little thrill, and for a moment I feel the way I did at age 12, huddled in my room, reading Doc Smith’s Lensmen novels with their instantaneous communications. We are on the brink of building cars that do the driving for us—they already work with more computing power than an 80s vintage computer.

Going through the day reminds me of scenes from the works of Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, scores of others. In many ways we have built the world envisioned in the pages of science fiction magazines of the 50s and 60s. The only exception appears to be space travel—it’s the 21st Century and we still do not have a colony on the moon or Mars. Space exploration is happening, just not in the way we expected, so it’s a minor quibble.

I grew up at a time when reading novels and magazines adorned by the garish and outre paintings of artists like Ed Emshwiller, Kelley Freas, Paul Lehr, or Richard Powers could earn you ridicule from peers or lectures from adults about wasting time with nonsense. I, and many others, stuck with it because something about it clicked and nothing else came close to providing the same thrill. For many, devotion lapsed with adulthood, but some of us came back, and today we feel a bit vindicated—the images of science fiction are everywhere.

It is, however, a mistake to value science fiction for its presumed predictions. While we have certainly arrived in The Future, the fact is that if a writer of the 40s or 50s or 60s has turned out to be correct in an extrapolation, it is purely serendipity. These are stories, not blueprints, and casting fortunes is for the tea leaf and horoscope crowd, not science fiction writers.

If utility in art must be found, then the benefit many of us derived from science fiction is simply this: it taught us not to fear change. Tomorrow is just another place to visit, and next year a new city or country. It shows us that things happen for reasons, that the best tool we have with which to face the world is our mind and the effectiveness of that tool is composed of the two most indispensable things—knowledge and imagination.

Things have gotten a bit darker in science fiction, as in the world at large. In some ways we’ve forgotten the 12-year-old to whom these tales should first speak. But at the core of the genre is an optimism and confidence difficult to find in any other literature. After all, most science fiction begins with the assumption that there will be a tomorrow.

For my part, I’ve never been frightened by the prospect of change. In fact, I’ve always looked forward to it. Every now and then, I see something new on the street, in science, on tv, in the world and I look at it and say “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” I can thank all those crazy stories that took delight in the infinite variety of the universe and showed me how to greet the future. For me, that’s why science fiction matters—and always will.

Absurdity

Casting Call

I’m feeling kind of antic this morning, so I thought I’d play a little fantasy game.  Most writers, whether they admit it or not, indulge in a game of imagining who would play what part in films from their books.  This comes almost second nature to me, since from an early age I started reading with a movie playing in my head and I would cast the parts.  (My most successful casting job was Michener’s Hawaii—I got just about every part right but one, that of Rafer Hoxworth.)

So I thought I’d post my choices for casting in movies from some of my books.  What I’d really like is for people to post their choices in comments.

To start with, Compass Reach.  The part of Fargo has changed over the years, from a youngish Daniel Craig to Robert Carlyle to  Ioan Gruffud (all Brits, imagine that) to more recently Jamie Bamber (another Brit) to my current choice of Ryan Phillipe (an American for once).  I still think Daniel Craig would be good.  But Fargo is mercurial that way.

But for Lis, one actress just leapt out at me the moment I saw her and I exclaimed “That is Lis!”  Franke Potente

Haven’t seen anyone yet who’d do better in the role.

Stephen, of course, is another mercurial one, but I finally settled on James Marsters (yeah, Spike of Buffy fame).  He’s it, I think, for the stricken telelog.

Metal of Night is a bit rougher.  For Cira Kalinge I have two actresses in mind.  The first is Indira Varma of Rome fame, but the other would be Nia Long.  I have one actor in mind for the dual role of Alexan and Nicolan Cambion and that is Johnny Depp.  Name dropping perhaps, but there it is.

But for Merrick…ah, yes, my ongoing spymaster/corporate magnate/mover’n’shaker.  Again, just one actor—Tim Roth.

Tim Kang as Tory Shirabe, Ralph Fiennes as Maxwell Cambion, and for the berserker part of Venner…Rufus Sewell

Peace & Memory has a larger cast and more possibilities, but the actress I have in mind for Tamyn Glass…well, bear in mind that I think if this film has a chance in hell of being made, it won’t be for ten years, by which time she’ll have grown into the part.  Eliza Dushku.  Which is a bit of a cheat, because everyone else I have in mind would be cast in a film made, say, tomorrow.  At one time Sigourney Weaver would have been a shoe-in, but in SF she’s too much Ripley, so it would be Ripley playing Tamyn, and that might not be a good fit.  However, as an alternative more in line with what I have in mind, someone like Angela Bassett would be good.  But this is up for grabs, really.  I’ll stick with Eliza as an image.

Joclen would be well played by Amanda Righetti

Kevin McKidd for Benajim Cyanus.  We can stick with Tim Roth for the discorporate Sean Merrick.  Then we come to the pivotal role of the prophylactic, Piper Van.  I have a couple of names in mind for that, one simply because I like her—well, I like them all—but she has demonstrated an ability to do the physical side:  Marley Shelton.   Perhaps a bit too “girlie” for Piper, but as I say, I like her.  Katie Sackhoff  which after Battlestar Galactica and her performance as Starbuck might be a bit obvious, but she’s got the presence to carry off the part.  A less obvious choice would be Thandie Newton.  Piper is supposed to be enhanced and, therefore, deceptive.

Naril Van, Tamyn’s lawyer, would be well played by Mary McDonnell,  but I could also see her played well by Mary Steenburgen.  Don’t know which I’d prefer.

Fisher, the bad guy, I’d cast Jonny Lee Miller.  Not, perhaps, an obvious choice, but thin about it, he’d do marvelously.

Which brings us to Ryan Jones, Bool Nooneus, and Elen ap Marik.  Ryan I think should be played by Robert Conrad of Wild Wild West fame.  Or The Black Sheep.  Or a gazillion tv movies.  But take a look at more recent pics and he looks perfect.  Nooneus, just to be antic, would be Stephen Fry.

Then there is Elen, the woman who falls for Benajim and has such, er, interesting modifications.  She’d have to be someone who could carry it off with one artificial eye.  My choice?   Maybe I’ll leave that one blank for now and see if anyone comes up with someone for the part.

That’s the Secantis Sequence and certainly not all of the parts.  It would be fun to see what people thought of the secondary and tertiary characters, who would be good to play them, but also the alternatives to my list.  There are several characters I skipped in this, but we can revisit the topic later if it’s fun.

Ah, fantasy.  Now, who would I get to direct…?

Art

The Bubble and Warehouse 13

I just finished watching the new show on SyFy called Warehouse 13.  I enjoyed it, it was a good ride, even though they clearly went after the X-Files crowd with this one.  It could be worth a few hours to see where they go with it.  They took the endless warehouse from Indiana Jones, added some National Treasure grace notes, stirred in a dollop of Muldur and Scully, and introduced a bit of humor.  That last is very important, because when you have a premise that is this borderline, taking it too seriously is risking alienating a lot of audience.  The main reason the X-Files worked was the mood, the color, the textures that Carter wove into it, and he played the conspiracy theory game like a master.  But for me, it got very old very fast.

The problems with the X-Files were manifold and manifest.  The biggest one was Scully.  She was the dumbest “scientist” I’d ever seen on television or read in fiction.  To remain so obdurately unseeing through all that she was put through required zero imagination in the character, zero sense of humor, and probably some sort of serial fixation or related pathology.  If they’d played that up it might have worked, but for pity’s sake she was just dense.  And therefore unbelievable.

The other problem with it was the profundity of the secrets ultimately being kept.  It worked well when Muldur was just going through a bunch of old case files no one wanted to tackle because they led to bizarre places.  Kept modest like that would have allowed the concept to work on the fringe, where it started out, and could have been very entertaining.  But when it became this all-encompassing, “the aliens have been here and we are in league with them” kind of schtick, it became ridiculous.

Because they were trying to keep it consistent with mimetic fiction.  They were trying to convince us that the world really is this way, only we don’t know it.  They tried to make it mainstream.

Doesn’t work.  Fringe stuff has to stay on the fringe.  Now you can use the premise that what’s on the fringe is really there, but it’s kept on the fringe, and the agents in charge are tasked with keeping the rest of us from knowing it, and in so doing keep all this weird shit away from everyone.  You build a bubble attached to the “real world” and populate it with fun plots and wild extrapolations. but it doesn’t have to bear the burden of supporting itself interwoven with the rest of the world.

Which one can do as well, but not at series length.  A single movie will work.  A novel, a short story.  Once you extend the concept into multiple seasons, you run into problems.

The Warehouse 13 people aren’t making that mistake.  They’ve created their bubble and there is a conduit attaching it to the real world, but it is not in the real world.  The two agents are tasked with removing the weird stuff and quarantining it in South Dakota.  That will work.

They will, certainly, imply that what is secreted in the warehouse has, in one way or another, over time, here and there, now and then, affected the real world, and that’s cool, too, but with the conceit that the three habitues of the warehouse are supposed to bottle this stuff up we are not burdened with the implausibilities and inexplicabilities of having the government know about this stuff and attempting to use it.

And keeping everything looking like it still does when we step out our front door.

The way science fiction would work in that instance would be to set the show in the future and posit that everything is now different.  It would not then be burdened with selling the audience that this is “our” world, but a world yet to come.  Suspension of disbelief proceeds apace then without fear that some major difficulties with the audience b.s. detector will come into play.

Part of this problem is also with what I call the Escalation Problem, which has been part of science fiction almost from day one.  Look at, say, E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen.  Each succeeding book—indeed, each succeeding chapter—required a bigger bang than the last.  It was almost a Hollywood approach—to feed the expectations of the audience, the special effects have to keep getting bigger, wilder, more impressive, almost to the point where the storytelling and plot become little more than vehicles for the next cool thing.  Smith could match his plots and ideas to his effects, so it wasn’t a disaster, but today, especially in television, this is a Big Problem.  It leads to escalations of the absurd in many instances.  It leads to cul-de-sacs out of which the writers cannot write.

But it’s a real disaster when  stories are set in the given world, the mundane world as it were.  Because eventually you have to explain, subtextually if nothing else, why the world hasn’t changed when the tv is turned off and we turn on the news.

Hence the bubble.

I’m looking forward to seeing a few more episodes of this show.  I like the premise (such as it is) and I love Saul Rubinek.  He’s one of the better character actors working today.  For a treat, you should see his portrayal of Lon Cohen in the Timothy Hutton Nero Wolfe’s.

So, with a caveat or two, I’ll give Warehouse 13 my blessing.  As if it needs it.  Let’s just hope they can keep it on track.

Art

Plans…

The book I’m working on is the second of a trilogy.  Back when I became seriously engrossed in science fiction—the second time, not the first; the first was at age 10 or 11, when everyone is supposed to fall headfirst into this wonderful amalgam of weirdness— in the late 70s, early 80s, there was a running joke in the field that for a bunch of science geeks, SF writers couldn’t count because we didn’t seem to know that there were only three books in a trilogy.  I think it was Piers Anthony who began getting joked about this way.

I never intended to write series.  I have a problem with most series work, even reading it.  I get bored with the same characters in x number of successive novels.  I have attempted from time to time to write a number of short stories with the same characters, but it has never gotten past two stories.  And when I originally constructed the Secantis Sequence it was with the idea that the books shared a common background but no common characters.

(It turned out that I did have one character that I intended to carry over, Sean Merrick.  There are in boxes three complete Sean Benjamin Merrick novels which will likely never see the light of day.  In a very minor way, minor, mind you, he is my Lazarus Long character.)

As time has advanced and I find myself trying to figure out how to write something that will both sell and stay in print, I am coming inexorably to the point of committing serious series.  Much as I like and usually prefer to have novels as stand-alones, especially as I get older, it is equally clear to me that Readers like consistency.  It’s a relationship thing.  You meet someone, you have dinner, take in a show, the conversation is really good, and later…well, readers have grown weary of one-book-stands, apparently, and like to settle down.  At least it’s not a monogamous desire.

So I have devised works of late that will go to sequels and/or series.

With the same characters.

Orleans should it ever be published will introduce everyone to Claire St. Griffe, who is what I have termed a voyant—one who can shift her consciousness into another’s mind.  I have a nifty skiffy rationale for this, it is not fantasy, but it is just barely SF.  This is an alternate history as well and I finished it a few years ago.  It has been seeking a publisher since.

Having gone recently (as reported here) to a conference concerning a central character to this trilogy, I decided upon the eve of the day job’s end to start working on book two.  Oculus is well under way.  The third volume will be called Orient and the working title for the whole project is The Oxun Trilogy.  Have fun looking that one up and wondering how it will tie in.  If I handle it right, it’ll be cool.

Now, I have it in mind to establish a premise wherein I could conceivably write more Claire St. Griffe novels if the need arises—like a publisher waving vast sums of money under my nose—at which point the newer books will comprise a different series.  Same character, different background.

Meantime, there is the historical I finished last year, The Spanish Bride.  Now I fully intend that this be a real honest-to-god series, with several novels, and I have the hubris to believe I could pull this off.  Main character is a man named Ulysses Granger who is a (secret) officer in the Continental Army.  After the Revolution is concluded, he moves to St. Louis to find out who murdered his best friend there three years earlier.

This book is also finished and looking for a publisher.  Should it sell, I have the outlines for the next two.  I could do ten novels in this series, there is certainly enough historical material at hand to do twenty.

I have just put a proposal together for another trilogy.  I don’t want to talk about that just now, though, so forgive me.

The Secantis Sequence?  Sure, I have outlines for two more.  I always did intend doing a direct sequel to Peace & Memory, a diptych so to speak.

What would all this do to the stand-alones I have in my files waiting to be written?

Don’t know.  It’s a problem I’d like to have just now, being committed to two trilogies and a possible long term series.  I have brief synopses for at least three stand-alone novels.

Right now, I have to admit, I could happily jettison any one or four of these plans for the one or two that get picked up and work.

As I said, I’m well into Oculus and having a ball with it.  I’m writing this just now as sort of a record of my state of mind.  Right now, career-wise, I am not where I want to be, but I’m doing the part I like to do.  I have a library full of books to read and the one I’m writing is about to require that I read at least two of them I haven’t yet touched for background.  Paris in the 1920s.  Hmmm, he hmms as he rubs his hands together.  Crazy stuff.  It is, you know, they were crazy people back then.

So I’m blathering.  It’s my blog, I get to blather.

Tomorrow I finish chapter seven.  Then, the world!  Bwahahaha!

(Clears throat to indicate abrupt self-consciousness.)

Anyway, have a good one, whatever it is.  More later.

Art

Work In Progress

I’ve been unemployed now for just over two weeks.  Gotta say, Ilike it.  Not the lack of money (I am after all applying for unemployment compensation) but the fact that I’m not going in to a smelly day job five days a week.  The fact that I’ve got a few hours per day more to work on what I consider important.

And I have been.  We found out back in 1995 to 1997 that I could manage my time in a disciplined manner.  I wrote, or finished, three novels in those two years, as well as about twenty short stories that mostly sold.  Not all and not soon enough to keep me unemployed, hence for the last 12 years I’ve been toiling at a job I did not want and came eventually to loathe.  (Not, I hasten to add, the fault of the job.  I just didn’t want to be doin’ it, y’know?)

I do have this little problem of no income…

I know what I want to have happen, but the only thing I can currently do is to work at my craft and bide my time and, frankly, hope someone decides I’m worth taking a chance on.  It is indeed absurd that I have ten published novels under my belt and can’t currently get a contract.  Did I say absurd?  It is ridiculous.  It is the butt end of a cosmic joke for which the punchline is the heat death of justice, an irony so dense it is a short way till light cannot escape, a joyless black comedy filled with unfunny counterpunches to leave Mike Tyson baffled and depressed.

Yet I slog on.

It may turn out to be that I’m really not good enough, that what I do doesn’t hold up in some unfathomable way that keeps getting me passed over.

Nah.  The worst you could say is that I’m not “commercial” enough.  Don’t know what to do about that.  You write what’s on your mind and in your heart at the moment or you hang it up and go do journalism.

But I am writing like a fiend now.  Two weeks, I am on chapter six of Oculus, the sequel to Orleans (which damn well better sell now, as there will be two books in the series), and I have personal proof of the power of the unconsious—or the subconscious—or whatever it is, that which Damon Knight called “Fred” and refers to the pre-conscious machinations of the mind working on a problem absent one’s full attention or even awareness.  I’ve sort of experienced this before.  Anyway, I wrote a pretty long synopsis for this book about seven, eight months ago, and apparently the hindbrain has been working on it ever since.  Because when I opened the file, wrote CHAPTER ONE across the top of the first page, and began writing, well, it just went.  It’s going.  I haven’t had the usual hiccups yet.  Knock on polystyrene, perhaps I won’t.  I’m nearly 25,000 words into it, which will count as roughly one fifth of the completed novel.  In two weeks!

I am encouraged.  This may well work out.  Stay tuned.

current affairs

To Explore Strange New Worlds….

The number of stars discovered having planets in orbit has grown over the years since we figured out how to find them.  Mostly, though, the planets in question have been big Super Jovians, basically failed stars that, had they been a bit more massive, probably would have ignited and turn their primary into a binary or even trinary star system.  Smaller planets— say, like Earth or Mars—are by definition harder to find.

But find one we have.  Check this piece at Panda’s Thumb.

The possibilities inch toward probabilities that there is life—rich life, complex life—elsewhere, not just here.  This is a really cool time to be a science fiction fan.

Or maybe not.  Once the fantasy becomes fact, will it have the same kick?  It’s a question prompted on a much smaller scale by SF stories that have dated badly.  Technology or even basic science has passed them by and rendered them incorrect, obsolete in their premises.  I’ve seen it suggested that such stories be treated as alternate history, which is a good way around some of the pitfalls.  A lot of Arthur C. Clarke falls into this category.  Most of the apocalytpic tales that had us living in ruins before the 21st Century.  Putting a date on the events in a story can have a detrimental effect in terms of its viability in the future.

This doesn’t bother some people.  I have a hard time with it and I admit it’s a personal thing with me.  When I read a novel that was published in the 50s or 60s about events in the 90s and those events are, necessarily, wrong, my suspension of disbelief goes out the window.  But mainly if the events of the story are sufficiently large scale—like the Soviet Union winning the Cold War or the advent of a nuclear holocaust or a moonbase or major shifts in geopolitics.  If the story is personal and doesn’t require that kind of overall rearranging of the landscape, it works just fine.  But then, is it science fiction?

Alternate history really would be a good way to view a lot of old SF.  The exploration of strange new worlds we never found…

In the meantime, we have some real ones that have been found.  How cool is that?