This week’s episode features part one of a pretty intense genre discussion. We talk about what we think makes science fiction beautiful and how it relates to other genres. You can check out the episode here, or look us up on iTunes. Thanks for listening!
Adam and I have made enormous progress on our collaborative story. How much? Day one ended at about 850 words, which is certainly nothing to scoff at; day two, however, ended at about 4,000 words, which seems to me to be an impressive amount of writing for anyone. To be fair, I wrote close to 2,500 of that, since Adam skipped out for 45 minutes to take care of some business. That means it’s his turn to add a substantial chunk to the story though. In any case, some very interesting problems arose as we started work on the project again. Plotting, for example, proved difficult for both of us, since we couldn’t decide where to take the story. We had some ideas, but we each kept finding holes in the ideas of the other, which made trying to pin down a central “plot” impossible. I don’t think that will be a permanent problem. We seem to have started in the middle of the middle of a story, which means we’re going to have to add something to the beginning anyway. At that point, we’ll have an enormous climax and a lot to think about. But there are some really cool things about using Google Docs for story collaboration: You can comment live on something that has been written, either to get clarification or make a suggestion (I used this to ask Adam a question about a word I didn’t understand–a medical word). You can correct one another right then and there. This is opposed to going back and fixing spelling errors and serious grammar problems yourself. You don’t have to stop writing. You can keep going. You can keep track of all of your research, etc. And you can share it publicly with everyone as a kind of teaser. Can you guess what we’re writing? We’re going to hit the story again tonight (and some of our other individual projects). Hopefully we’ll get closer to a conclusion (which, by the way, I’m pretty sure is going to involve quantum physics and other insane stuff). What have you been writing, by the way? I’d like to know (because I’m a creepy writing stalker).
The Internet is an amazing thing. I’m sure of it now. Yes, it’s full of stupid people making stupid comments on YouTube that make dyslexic people wonder if everyone else is dyslexic too, but after what happened last night, I have to say that the Internet is the single greatest human invention (next to bread and John Williams). My friend Adam and I have been doing our best to do what are called Word Wars every single day. This is in part because Adam is the crazy “write 5 billion words a day” type and because he knows that the last four to five months have been a veritable hell for my writing; I suspect he’s using my lighter load this semester and his persuasive abilities to get me back on track. In any case, a Word War is a kind of “competition” between at least two people (though I’ve seen wars with up fifteen) who decide on a time limit, and then do nothing but write for that period; the person with the most words after the buzzer “wins,” but the object is not necessarily to win–the object is to write. Adam and I have written over 20,000 words (combined) since the 1st through these wars. We don’t get to them every day, since sometimes one of us is having an off day, but we try our hardest and have formed a pretty strong little writing relationship (and friendship) through all of our critiques and what not. Really, it is. Today, however, I upped the ante. I’ve been playing with Google Docs a lot in the last three weeks for the classes I teach, though I’ve been using them for Young Writers Online for a year or two. Lately I’ve been getting a laugh from seeing people from YWO using the documents I set up for moderators at the same time that I’m using them. It’s the ultimate in web-surveillance, because you not only see that they’re online, but you see everything they are typing, including when they select features (like bold or italics) and use them. Maybe I’m a simpleton, but I find real-time documents amusing. I suspect this is because I grew up in a period where things like Google Docs were either not around or not of interest to me (video games were pretty much my life-blood when I was young). I preferred Real Time Strategy Games (like Starcraft) and the first Half-Life, which is the single greatest First Person Shooter ever invented. Period. I will argue with you over that game until I suffocate! Moving on. So early last night it dawned on me that Adam and I could write a story in Google Docs in real time, piece by piece. We’ve talked about collaborating before, but haven’t done so yet because, well, we’re both busy and weren’t sure how it would all work. I suggested doing real-time story writing with Google Docs as a semi-joke to him, and then didn’t really think too much of it for an hour while we did some writing. And then I got inspired to write a paragraph of something entirely random and explosive (literally, it starts with an explosion), and then I forwarded the Google Doc link to Adam and gave him editing capabilities. An hour later, we had an action-packed scene completely written out. Written together. Paragraph by paragraph. Look out! The pea people are coming! First things first, let’s get the obvious out of the way. The fact that technology has made such a collaborative project possible without long wait times between chapters and so on is simply amazing. Here we are, two little nobodies with very little to our name (with the exception of Adam, who has a pro sale to his name, because he’s awesome like that) writing a story together in real time, watching each other as each word flows from our fingers. I’m awed by it, to be honest. Maybe I’m silly to get so excited by such a thing, but what’s going through my head right now is the potential for this technology to make collaboration across borders possible. Imagine writing a story with someone from the Philippines or Japan or Europe or (and here my skin starts to tingle) someone from the Caribbean, or the lower Americas! Maybe it’s already happening and I just haven’t heard of it yet, since Google Docs has been around for a while. But the second thing to take from our first day is two-fold: We came up with a fun, action-packed romp that we’re both quite happy with. Will we have to edit it? Of course, but the cool thing about real-time collab is that we can do it together. We both really want to keep it up, and are planning to spend a bit of time tomorrow doing so. Maybe even a few hours. I don’t know. All I know is that we want to see where it goes. Maybe this story will be a dud, or maybe we’ll see a real gem in it, edit it up, and submit it somewhere. And you know what? I don’t care what happens with the story so long as we both get something useful from it and decide to collab again. Adam and I have talked about writing a novel together in the past (a young adult, science fiction space opera, actually), and if this is the gateway into making that possible, then you can count me in. Adam has one hell of a brain and the ideas that come out of his head are fantastic, if not a little unsettling. I’m not too shabby either, and I think combining both will produce some truly amazing things. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Whatever happens, I think we’re enormously pleased with last night’s proceedings. ————————————————————– So, have you ever collaborated with someone over the Internet? I’d like to hear about it in the comments. It doesn’t have to be a writing collaboration. Music, movies, whatever! Let
(This post is technically the last half of the post I started here, though it has diverged from a discussion of Alan Moore.) What is it about America and science fiction? We seem to have a love affair with the stuff as a society, with most of what we watch somehow associated with the genre. It is one of the largest and most influential genres in the country, secondary only to religious texts and, perhaps, fantasy. While the literary side of things may be lagging behind in terms of sales, its film side, for better and for worse, has controlled the market for the last ten years–with the exception of 2010, which has been heavily oriented towards fantasy titles (specifically, sequels to major franchises). We’re not the only country interested in SF, of course, but America is not exactly like other countries. I’m not suggesting that we’re “better” by pointing out America’s uniqueness, nor I am suggesting, as Alan Moore does in “Frankestein’s Cadillac,” that there might be something particular to America that has made it (and continues to make it) a breeding ground for science fiction. Instead, I want to suggest that America’s vibrant SF field is not necessarily unique to it, except in terms of its specific cultural eccentricities. So retro it hurts! First, I think it’s important to note that SF as a genre1 is, in most cases, the product of an extensive socio-economic process linked to the rise of industrialization (the second industrial revolution for the U.S.) and mechanized material production. I’m not the only one to suggest the link between genre-production and industrialization, but I may be one of the few to suggest that the same process that spawned SF in America and elsewhere is not only duplicable, but also happening right now. New, vibrant SF fields are springing up all over the world, most notably in China and Africa, but previously in places like the Caribbean, Latin America, and so on.2 These various “fields” share characteristics, but also differ both because of the cultural context and the ways in which industrialization arises in various parts of the world. In the case of America, there are few characteristics which make it “different.” We’re not wholly unique.3 The “melting pot” concept (which is, in part, mythical, but we won’t get into that now) is true of other countries too, such as the United Kingdom, parts of Europe, and so on. Even the way the U.S. has dealt with immigration (now and in the past) is not all that different from what is going on in other parts of the world. Our connection to technology is equally shared with other developed/developing/etc. nations, where science and its impact on societal production are desired over other methods of production. What seems to differ in the America is the way it is divided, which has led to a variety of connected, but unique “identities.” But because these individual States are “loose” States (the only “hard” border in the U.S. is the one that surrounds it, not the individual borders) and share a cultural background and governmental structure, there is considerable bleeding across lines. Other parts of the world have similar structures, such as Europe, which has tried, through the European Union, to form a collaborative “national” framework, to varying degrees of success. The U.S., however, has a rich history of hodgepodge “loose” States, and the linking of the national structure to industrialization, I think, shows how the formation of SF in America is unique, while also not entirely separate from other industralizing(ed) nations. Again, I don’t think we’re wholly unique, but rather sort of “eccentric.” America’s culture and history do contain unique characteristics. American nationalism and Imperialism are not the same as other nationalisms and Imperialisms, though there are, as always, similarities. Even certain aspects of our culture–like baseball–while now shared elsewhere, are at least inventions of the U.S., even if such things are transfusions (manipulated by America) from other nations. Like cereal, only spicy. SF in this country usually has a kind of “American” flavor, but trying to describe it is similar to trying to point out where American culture begins and where it ends. I like to think of America as an emulation of the world, because the world is already a hodgepodge of States, but America’s loose internal borders are different than those of the world as a whole. We’re not terribly concerned (right now) with culture bleeding over from other American “spaces.” But we are concerned with culture bleeding over from elsewhere. Almost all nations are. Nations have immigration control, deportation, laws that make explicit the privileging of local culture over foreign culture, and so on.4 But the U.S. has very little of that inside/between its borders (with some exceptions). Whether we can see that in American SF is hard to say. American eccentricities certainly show up, but I don’t think they change the core of SF or whether the U.S. is more suited to SF literary production than other nations. Looks like fun… But maybe the only reason Alan Moore originally brought this up, and why I’m talking about it here, is because SF in America is enormous in comparison to other places with SF traditions (the U.K., Russia, etc.). In that case, America is only unique in this context because it is one of the top producers of film and literature in the world (notice I didn’t say “good” or “bad”). But that’s not going to be for long. China is well on its way. Why? Industrialization (old form and new form–i.e., modern technological advances). Then maybe we’ll be asking if SF is unique to China. Do you think SF is unique to America? Why or why not? What makes American SF a unique literary form to you? ——————————————————————— 1. By genre, I mean a set of established literary modes that have concretized in the literary landscape; all genres have precursors–texts we refer to as “the beginning of the genre” or “early examples of
I am new to Residential Aliens. Last year they published one of my stories, being the first place to publish anything I’ve written. The publication was a fluke. Mr. Perry, the regular editor of the online and print magazine, responded to one of my tweets about a story I was having trouble placing, and I decided then to send it his way. Clearly he liked it. Issue #4 of the magazine is a special edition, though. Not because it includes anything I’ve written, which would represent a conflict of interest on my part for this review, but because John Ottinger, the infamous blogger at Grasping for the Wind, stole the editor’s seat for this one issue, selecting seven speculative tales for inclusion. I don’t know what the editorial process was like for him, and I can’t recall if this is his first foray into editing (which is not an easy job to do, by the way; rejection letters are not fun to write). In any case, it gave me the opportunity to use my Nook, which has not been getting the use I would like due to graduate school. Cover Art (“That Darn Tower of Babel!”) by Aaron C. Wirtz Issue #4 is somewhat of a mixed bag, but it is also an issue that shows a fair deal of potential, which I think is important to note for a small, semi-pro market. While the issue contains stories that I didn’t care for, there are also stories here that I think are fantastic examples of speculative fiction. “Salieri” by Marina Julia Neary, for example, end well enough, but is most interesting because of what it does with its setting and novum (the “new” idea). It follows a brilliant college student in a faux-Victorian-era city who finds himself turned second-rate by his equally brilliant, but unusual, albino roommate. The main character’s interactions with the social landscape of a rigid university is only overshadowed by the plot twist, both of which are interesting concepts to consider in a realistic setting. The only significant flaw in the story is its light-handed tackling of the twist, which could have been expanded and addressed with as much fervor as the university’s social rules. There’s a grain of something brilliant in this story, not just because the ending flips the relatively mundane setting on its head, but also because what happens and what is left to be discussed are both ideas that really should be explored in quasi-fantasy (quasi-steampunk; quasi-alternate-history) fiction. “Salieri” is certainly one of the strongest stories in Issue #4, despite its minor flaws. “Flawed with some shiny, expensive gems,” I think, is a useful way to describe Issue #4. Most of the stories in this issue are at least entertaining (which I’ll get to in a moment), but there are also stories that I think miss the mark. “End of Eden” by Shane Collins, for example, reads more like fan-fiction for The Road (or any other dystopian tale from which McCarthy might have drawn), with a pair of lovers traveling across a ruined landscape avoiding gangs of wild people. The problem with post-apocalyptic fiction (for me) is that so much of it reads like things that came before, and are, as a result, predictable. In the case of “End of Eden,” it is obvious from the moment the main characters arrive in a utopian community early in the story that everything is going to fall apart. The fact that the female character gets pregnant during this journey–which is supposed to be devastating for her and her partner–is left unresolved; as far as post-apocalyptic fiction goes, few stories that I have read have dealt with how one survives while pregnant in that kind of hostile environment, which might explain why I was surprised to see this particular plot point in “End of Eden.” It would be better to see that plot resolved, though. While Collins’ story benefits from the potential for unfamiliarity–i.e., that readers unfamiliar with dystopian SF might not recognize the story’s cliche framework–the same is not true of “The King of Infinite Space” by Jason Reynolds. As a story about drunk driving and racing, Reynolds’ tale suffers from being utterly familiar. We’ve heard this story told before: a young man gets plastered and attempts to drive home, decides to try racing someone at a light, and then pulls out in the end only to find out the following day that the other car had crashed, killing the passengers. Even the final “twist” is problematic, since it does nothing but conveniently connect the main character to someone else and provide closure. As a motivational story, I suppose it works, but it is otherwise seriously lacking. Other stories have similar flaws, though less pronounced, but they also contain a flare of originality. “Fishing the Moons of Jupiter” by Jason Rizos takes a premise that should be quite boring (mining in space) and flips it on its head like a Doctor Who story by changing the search for minerals to the search for enormous, and dangerous, space worms (which produce copious amounts of energy that can be harvested back on Earth); but after the story progresses from the trials and tribulations of a mining crew in space to a very interesting “discovery,” it ends, leaving an unresolved bigger picture. I would have liked to see where the story could have gone with that ending, but the story simply stops. “Overgrown” by Stoney M. Setzer, in contrast, reads like a pulpy action story that knows it’s a pulpy action story, which might explain why its narrative feels disconnected. The story tries to work too many narrative strands together (the story of a scientist who has overstepped and of a dysfunctional family who has to contend with the effects of science gone wrong–i.e., plant monsters), as if the author wanted to interject and say, “See? This is what is going on over here. Now back to your scheduled programming.” The story is, overall, entertaining and humorous, but too much attention is placed somewhere
A bit of random fun that you all might enjoy. I’m hoping to one day make a card game out of this insanity. Thoughts anyone?
