Welcome to the Diamond Age

Welcome to the future, friends.

I’d argue that Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age is one of the best cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk, if you prefer) books out there.  It tells the story of how one little book transformed the world.  And now Motorola’s Zoom laptop is doing the same thing for children in Ethiopia.  The OLPC Project dumped almost 1000 tablets in two villages in Ethiopia in sealed boxes with no instructions.  Within five months, these kids who had never seen an English word before had hacked the OS.  You can read the details in the article linked above.  The point I want to make is that Stephenson’s book was an inspiration for the project, and it just goes to show that Science Fiction is more than words on a page.  The ideas in a novel can affect the lives of thousands of people and make the world a better place, and it doesn’t even take that much effort.  This isn’t the first time that science fiction has predicted the future, and it definitely won’t be the last.  So the next time someone calls you out for being a nerd or a geek or “wasting your time on that crap”, just remember these kids in Ethiopia, and what science fiction has done to help improve their lives.

 

Things I Wish SF(F) Had More Of

So, after thinking about my last post on education, I’ve come to some conclusions. I’ve been reading less and less science fiction lately, and I haven’t been able to figure out why. But now I think I know. It’s because I’ve been seeing a lot of the same things recently. Here’s a list of recent sub-genres I’ve become disillusioned with lately, and some ideas I think could infuse them with new life:

1. Space Opera–Don’t get me wrong, I love this sub-genre, but we’ve been harping on post-humanism and alien combat quite a lot lately. How about we try something new? Like some new thoughts on STL travel, or Near-Earth Space exploration.

2. Near-future SF–Love this genre as well. (Futurismic, here’s to you!)  But we’ve been seeing a lot of the same thing, lately.  Nano-tech, cyberpunk, bio-punk.  I’d love to see some more stories on information technology pre-singularity.  VR’s been a common theme, but very few books out there seem to be addressing Augmented Reality(AR), which–for those who don’t know–is the mapping of virtual information, such as audio and video, onto the real world.  The more well-known application here is the good old “heads-up display”, or HUD, in use in targeting systems and mapping.  Stories about AR that come to mind:  Dennou Coil, Rainbows End, Eden of the East.  There’s a lot of potential in this technology, and a lot of conflict that it could create.  Virtual ads in fields, or modern digital graffiti are two.  And think of the networking and social media applications.

3.  Science fantasy:  There’s been a rise in this genre lately, which I have greatly enjoyed.  Some examples are anime’s Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou, which postulates a modern form of magic created with digital information instead of personal energy and ancient symbolism.  A great deal of steam-punk also falls into this category, although it’s generally not as modern as the normal idea of the genre.  Of course, I’m somewhat misrepresenting this term to describe a combination of scientific and fantastical elements.  I’m not really refering to just planetary romance or dying earth scenarios, as much as contemporary or near-future fantasy outside of the UF genre.  We might also include some space opera works in the category.  Anime provides the example of Heroic Age, while C.S. Friedman has given us the Coldfire Trilogy.

4.  Let’s also throw in alternate universe science fiction here.  Earth-like worlds with different cultural and geographical settings that nevertheless approximate our present level of technology.  I’m hard-pressed to come up with an example of this grouping that doesn’t involve alternate dimensions or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.  I’m not talking multiverses or dimension-hoppers here.  I’m thinking of entirely independent worlds.  Which makes me want to read this sort  of story even more.  Perhaps Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch could be an example book, although that veers closer to Science Fantasy/New Weird than I’m trying to go.

5.  Oh, and let’s not forget the Chimney-punk.  This isn’t a recognized genre yet, but I’m hard at work behind the scenes, spreading awareness(lol) and writing material.  New Weird isn’t the only interstitial genre out there–at least, not for long.

Anyway, those are a few genres I’d really love to see some new material in.  Does anyone have particular areas of their own that they find interesting but under-populated?

 

Resolution in Favor of Power Abuse: The Peter Watts Story

Okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole.  Canadian author Peter Watts was found guilty of resisting arrest while returning to Canada in December.  He faces a felony charge and up to two years in prison.  As far as I can tell, he’s only guilty on a technicality, but I’m not a lawyer.  There are plenty of more comprehensive articles on the net.

I’d like to extend my condoloences to Peter, who handled the jury’s decision very well, all things considered.  I hope he recieves leniency.  A suspended sentence would probably the best we can hope for.

God bless America.

 

Societal Expectations and Real World Cultural Baggage in Speculative Fiction

A few days ago, I posted a quote that expressed a rather negative view of our current system of education  (in American and around the world).  First, I’d suggest you watch the anime mentioned in the title of the work from which the quote is excerpted: “Kare Kano”.  This show was also known as Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo in Japanese, and “His and Her Circumstances” in English.  It really gives you an understanding of where the quote is coming from.  Of course, it’s 26 episodes or about 12 hours long.  So, I also hope to elaborate on that in this post and the ones that follow.  You won’t be required to watch the anime to understand the post.  That would be ridiculous.  But I still think it would help.

Now, you might wonder what this has to do with writing science fiction and fantasy–or anything else, for that matter.  The answer is “nothing”.  And “everything”.  It also might have something to do with fact that I’m researching for a near-future SF story dealing with education and society.  Bear with me.

Every society has two important things that make it what it is: expectations and acceptations.  Expectations are pretty obvious, the things one is expected to do to make it in society.  In the modern world, these often include education, occupation, and reproduction.   Acceptations are a little more complicated.  They are culturally wide-spread opinions on what are “acceptable” deviations from the norm.  Being a child film star instead of going to normal school is an acceptation of modern American(US) society.  Becoming a drug dealer is not.

It doesn’t really matter in practical terms what an individual believes, because social pressures are usually strong enough to override individual opinions..  But it most certainly matters in personal terms.  Being forced to conform to a blanket set of expectations can be very damaging to a person.  For instance, in modern America, there is still a great deal of prejudice towards homosexual orientations.  Society expects that a man will pair up with a woman and have children.  When individuals deviate from these expectations, there are consequences, generally negative, in response to those unaccepted actions.

But think about this, there are also ways to positively violate societal expectations.  If someone drops out of college to join a rock band, there would normally be negative reactions, but if they become wealthy or famous or both, suddenly everyone is praising them.  Sort of the old “I’ll show them!” ideal.  But even with numerous examples of this, the negative perception of such behavior still exists, because “normal” people cannot do these things.  You might call these exceptions.  If one drops out of school and becomes a wealthy prostitute or pimp, even that “success” does not justify their deviation.

That’s how it works in the real world.  And on the surface, that’s how it works in fiction.  Especially mainstream, earth-based fiction.  But what about speculative fiction?  All too often, we drag our baggage along with is into stories ostensibly set in other worlds, dimensions, countries, even if the natural expectations and acceptations would normally be different in those settings. 

On the one hand, it could be argued that the whole point of fiction is to explore our own issues.  But I would counter that that doesn’t require us to transport all of our 21^st century Earth attitudes into past or future worlds.  You can still address contemporary issues in fictional settings.  All it takes is a little imagination.  And I know the spec fic community—and the writing community in general—has that.

It’s actually a very common discussion topic on web-based spec fic communities whether or not that ham-fisted projection is acceptable in good fiction.  If we look at contemporary foreign literature (and this applies not matter what is “foreign” to you), we can see that these authors can write a story in which we sympathize with character issues that don’t derive exclusively from our own culture.  Look at how popular Japanese cultural exports are in America.  An enormous number of manga, anime, and light novels are translated both officially and unofficially into American English.  Is Japan a radically different culture?  Not in the modern world.  But they do have a different set of cultural expectations, acceptations, and exceptions.

When writing a story, it’s very important to consider what is “normal” within that setting, and what is exceptional or discouraged.  It used to be that people from the lower classes were discouraged from pursuing higher education—or any education at all.  It used to be in our culture that music was a special activity, for a small number of people, and now it’s a part of most curriculums.  And before that, it was a community activity.

These sorts of societal pressure have an enormous impact on us as people, and the same should be true for characters in your story.  Examining and exploring these issues before you begin to write can cut down a great deal on the clichés common to many spec fic stories, such as the plucky princess, the genius peasant,  the scholarly whipping boy, the child seer/mage, and the feisty girl thief.  Assuming they don’t fit in the context of the story, of course.

And, of course, for those characters that do fall outside of the mold, it can create a more deep and realistic sense of tension between them and society.  And it can open up a wide array of themes for the story to explore: gender, age, race, class, etc.

 

Quote of the Night

Prospective valedictorians take heed:

“A child’s future should not be defined by how much longer they must work their ass off until they can do what they enjoy—because the answer is ‘forever’.”

~Kare Kano: Reflections on a Compulsory Education

 

World-building—And Why It Matters

One of the first things you’ll hear on going to a writing forum dealing with the genres of Speculative Fiction is that “characters and stories are more important than world-building.” Which, on the surface, is absolutely correct. You could create a fictional world twenty-thousand times as deep and fascinating as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and if you didn’t have a story with characters that took place in it, you’re not going to sell a book. At least, not a commercial fiction book.

But think about this, you could come up with the most fast-paced, suspenseful story ever written, and if the characters are cardboard, you won’t sell it. The same goes for having the most fascinating and intricate characters in the history of story-telling. If you don’t have a story, something for those characters to do, you won’t convince anyone to pay you for writing about them. So, we’ve concluded that no one aspect of a story make up for a lack in the other two.

But wait, didn’t I just quote Generic SFF Writing Forum Member as saying that both character and story are more important than world-building? Well, yes, I did. You can’t sell a story without a story, and it isn’t a good story without good characters. But the question is, how do you create a good story? With good characters? I would like anyone who would buy a story that was exactly the Borne Identity set in 435 BC Japan to raise their hand.

Now, for those of you who didn’t raise your hands, why not? (The rest of you can GTFO.) One reason might be that it makes absolutely no sense. You can’t set a story that’s identical to the Borne Identity in 435 BC Japan, because the story is set in Zurich, relies on the real-world geography of Zurich, and includes a great deal of not only Swiss, but also 20th century culture, that just didn’t exist in Japan (and still doesn’t, and never will) in the 5th Century BC. That makes sense, right?

Now, you could set a similar story to the Borne Identity in 5th century BC Japan. Perhaps an ambitious warlord or clan leader is using deadly proto-ninjas to assassinate his adversaries. (Yeah, it’s cliché, and historically inaccurate, but that’s not the issue. Well… okay, it’s exactly the issue.) But a similar story is still not the same story, right? There are going to be differences, most of them enormous, at least as far as the details go.

You might still be able to throw in some amnesia, and espionage, and a romantic subplot, but there won’t be any car chases, or guns, or long-range communications technology (e.g., cell phones). The characters and the setting, and probably many themes, will be informed by an entirely culture and perspective. And readers will expect the writer to be accurate in those things.

How does a writer do that? They research. A lot. Even the most seat-of-the-pants writer will be constantly checking their ideas against reality. They may decide to ignore it in very important areas, but they will know they are doing so.

In fantasy, or at least, secondary world fantasy, the writer does not have that enormous pool of reality to compare the story to. Instead of research, they do world-building. Everything that your normal, non SFF writer can look up on Wikipedia? You have to make that stuff up.
Of course, you do get the advantage of flexibility. Whereas an author writing in a well-known period of earth will have to fudge things—even when they know some readers will bite their head off for it—an SFF author has a lot more freedom to make shit up.

But, lest the reader still find plot holes you could drive the Deathstar through, you must be internally consistent. And that’s where all that effort you spent world-building comes in. Now, you can borrow a lot from real life: gravity, thermodynamics, human beings—but for most of the history and culture and geography, you can only get inspiration. Same for characters. You have to sew it together yourself from whole cloth. All of it…

Er, well–as much as you need for the story anyway. How much that is will depend on the scope of the story, but considering that most SFF written today has relatively large scope, you’ve still got a lot of work to do.

“But wait! It’s hard enough to come up with a plot and characters. Why must I create an entire world, as well?”

What? You thought SFF was easy? Reality check!

Making shit up is hard, but you have to know all of this stuff because your story and characters have to fit in the world in which they live. Remember our talk about setting the Borne Identity in 5th Century BC Japan? Setting matters—a lot. Now, there are many approaches, many methods, many ways to do this creation.

Some authors spend a few months working this stuff out at the beginning. Some people mix it together with the story and characters as they go along. Some people go back and revise once they have the basic draft of their story on paper. But you’ve got to do this work sometime. We can discuss the advantages of the different methods later. For now, you just need to understand why this stuff matters. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to decide which aspect to cut when they conflict.

 

Homeland Security: Protecting us from Belligerent Authors

Well, it’s nice to know we’re secure at the Canadian border, even if not the Mexican one.   All those wonderful men and women up there, protecting us from crazy Canadian SF writers.  Like Peter Watts. 

Peter is looking at up to two years in American prison for allegedly assaulting border guards conducting a search of his vehicle as he returned to Canada.  Here’s a link to Scalzi’s Whatever, where he posts about the situation.  The SF community has always been very close and supporting one another.  (Well, most of the time, anyway.)  Here’s your chance to be a part of that.  Please consider contributing to Peter’s legal defense fund. 

And keep in mind, most authors are not  Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling.  This money really will mean something.  Like not having to live on the street.  This is not a joke, people.

 

It’s Good To Know We’re Still Appreciated.

I don’t do these sorts of posts often, but I will now.  As an aspiring writer in the spec fic genre, I like to keep an eye out for oppurtunites, and the other one on our collective reputation.  So, to the point:

According to this little publisher, we’re worth about $.002 a word.  At a rate of 1000 words an hour, and not including revision and editing, our time appears to be worth $2.00 and hour.  It’s good to know that the fast food employees aren’t at the bottom of the totem pole.  I’m sure Mr. Scalzi has done a much better job of expressing the insult uttered so casually here.

Of course, maybe I shouldn’t talk.  I work as an editor for a non-paying e-zine market.  At least BMP is paying something, here.  But then, the e-zine I work for is a free one.  No cost to download and read and the staff puts up all necessary time and money ourselves.  BMP sells their mags for $9.95 on CreateSpace.  And their rejection rate is much higher as well.  Anyway, I’m sure you’re all capable of making your own decision.

 

The Other Side of the Issue

All issues have at least two sides.  Now that people are reading, I think it is time to present the other side of the argument (found here) in a fair and un-biased light.

The article I linked to discusses the shift from TV sf several decades ago, and TV sf today.  One of its main points is that there is now a lot more focus on human relationships in tv sf–as opposed to action, adventure and fancy technobabble.  This is somewhat true.  However, there has never been a strong focus on hard sf in television.  Instead of good ol’ boy space westerns, we have now shifted to “gritty, realistic, human-centered” space opera.  It really puts the “opera” into “space opera” folks. 

BSG has often been criticized as beng just a soap opera in space.  But then, old guard TV sf was just westerns in space, so the idea that female influence on the genre has lead to the end of hard sf on television is a bit misguided.  There has been a decrease in the space western, but the hard sf was barely there in the first place.  And truthfully, BSG had a very large male audience, so one cannot argue that men (and boys) don’t watch tv sf anymore.

The other cotention was that young men will not have the inspiration to go into the scientific fields that they once got from TV sf.  I’d like to propose that sci-fi readers are in fact more likely to enter the hard sciences, and so this point doesn’t hold much water.  Following my proposition also invalidates the Minsky quote, which–to be fair–the author  of the article never claimed was in response to television sf.  But he very quickly went on to apply it thusly, and so he gets very few points for his “honesty”.

Overall, I agree there has been a shift in tv sf.  No denying that.  But I don’t agree that tv sf was ever really a quality influence on young men, as the Spearhead article claims.  Just read the angsty rant by Benedict that they endorsed so bluntly.  No offense to you Trekkies (or Trekkers, whatever) out there.  I loved Star Trek, and Star Wars, and the original Battlestar Galactica as much as anyone.  But I’m not going to stand here and claim it is in any way equivalent to high-brow literature–or television.

I am not interested in addressing the claims and/or evidence of sexism or differences between men and women.  It is an interesting subject, yes.  But I do not believe such a conversation will be productive right now, nor is it in line with the focus of my blog.  I picked up on this because it dealt with a shift in a genre I care very much about, and because it’s always good to have a reasoned discussion on themes in literature.  I am not interested in enabling the exchange of tirades and trolling between two sides I find unlikely to reach an agreement or compromise at the current time.

 

The earlier post may be found here.

 

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

Well, at least according to this article over at the Spearhead, some blog about guys and how society’s makin’ ‘em all into gays.  I guess.

Now, this isn’t really news, as there have already been at least eight wonderful rebuttals across the blogosphere, and some good ole sarcasm.  And, normally, I don’t rant; and I don’t rave; and I don’t discuss sex, sexism, and the American Way.  But this article just ticked me off so much–as did another article it linked to on Big Hollywood.  So, I’m ignoring my usual policy of posting once every two or three days, so that I can indulge in my completely objective, righteous indignation.

Women are ruining science fiction?  Like that old  hag Ursula K. Leguin, right?  Right…  If you say so.

That’s the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard.  As if men could only enjoy hard sf, and women are only interested in soap operas in space.  Because women have never contributed to science.  And real men don’t watch soap operas.  Or read paranormal romance… or fantasy…or write space opera.  Gotcha Mr. Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech.  Maybe at least attempt to conceal your bias.  Well, I guess you get points for honesty.

Now, I’m not getting into the BSG debate.  I don’t need that.  I’ve watched both shows, and enjoyed both shows, though I like the new one a little better, or at least, I liked it better for the first few seasons.  I suppose this makes me a Fem-nazi from Venus.  Oh well.  Better than being a Misogynist from Mars.

ETA:  A response to this article has inadvertantly revealed the true feminist agenda.  Click here to find out!

Also, thanks to Whatever and Smart Bitches for pointing this article out to me. 

ETA:  More great responses:

Geek Feminism Blog

http://eumelia.livejournal.com/441106.html

SF Signal

http://mostcuriousthing.com/blog/2009/10/14/geek-rage-a-short-note-on-the-war-on-science-fiction-and-marvin-minsky/

And here, we have how not to respond to an article that is half rant/half hate: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/10/12/women-gays-apparently-ruining-sci-fi-for-the-rest-of-us

Note:  Please read this follow-up post where I attempt to see the other side of the issue… though I still do not entirely agree.

 

On that note, the next sub-genre of the week post will be up sometime this weekend.  I was going to do Cyberpunk, but I suppose now I should tackle another of my favorite genres:  Space Opera.