World in the Satin Bag

World in the Satin Bag

Interview w/ Paul Melko

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Here you go! An interview with the author of Ten Sigmas, which I reviewed here. After an hour of formatting the text, since it was a little wonky for some unknown reason, it is ready for your viewing pleasure! Thanks again to Mr. Melko for his time and the great answers he gave to my questions! Thanks for doing this interview with me. First, could you tell us a little about yourself (your history as writer, etc.)? My fiction has been appearing in print since 1996. I’ve published dozens of stories and they’ve been translated into Spanish, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and Romanian. My fiction has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Strange Horizons, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, and other places. My novella “The Walls of the Universe” was nominated for Nebula, Hugo, and Sturgeon Awards — all in one year! — and it won the Asimov’s Readers Award for Best Novella. My first novel, Singularity’s Ring, appeared in February of this year from Tor Books. My second novel, The Walls of the Universe, will come out next winter.I’m trained as an engineer, with a masters in Nuclear Engineering, and this affects all my work. My characters are logical, thoughtful, and practical (I hope). They’re problem solvers. Recently, I started studying for my MBA. This education has colored my writing as well, and I find myself adding economic details that might otherwise have been ignored in my previous futures.I am an active member of SFWA, sitting on the board as the South-Central Regional Director. I also am chairman of the Grievance Committee.I live in Ohio with my wonderful wife and four fairly wonderful children. The older kids and I are studying Taekwondo. What is it about science fiction that appeals to you? What are some of your favorite authors of today and the past? My biggest influences were Heinlein, Farmer, and Harrison. I never read Clarke, and I never read Asimov except for some classics. My first books were the Heinlein juveniles, specifically Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and The Rolling Stones. Farmer is the most influential on me.Right, now I’m reading quite a bit of YA. My eldest daughter has started reading and I try to keep up with her books. It’s hopeless, as she reads a book a day. I am the proud papa. What are you currently reading, what have you just read, and what do you hope to read? I’ve been reading Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of Sidon, as well as various MBA texts and business cases. Of the recent business texts, the most interesting has been The Mystery of Capitalism by Hernando De Soto. It posulates why capitalism works so well in certain countries but fails miserably in others. His thesis is that the evolved rules of capital in some countries — land ownership and use of collateral to gain loans — allow easy creation of more capital with the capital on hand. Whereas inother countries, there is too much dead capital — land and material with no clear ownership –, and so there is no way to leverage that capital to make more. “Ten Sigmas”, being a book of short stories, explores a variety of different technological avenues (including one about superheroes) from the dangers of fiddling with the past to the dangers of traversing between universes/dimensions. What would you say is a strength of the short form and do you prefer the short form to the novel? How would you describe the works presented in “Ten Sigmas” (the pitch, basically)? “Ten Sigmas” is my collection of science fiction stories, and all of them are tainted by my training and history. I don’t write down endings, and there’s not a story in the collection in which the world is worse off at the end, except for perhaps one. I am an optimist, I am a problem solver, and most of my characters are too.I love the short story. I learned to write with the short story. The short story is the test vehicle for ideas in literature. You can get away with so much in 3000 words that a novel just can’t sustain. You can try new devices. You can take on an affectation and see where it goes. You can play games with the reader. The novel is larger, but not as free. The novel reader isn’t as forgiving of experimentation. On the subject of short stories, do you see the short form disappearing in the near future or do you feel that it will prevail and grow? (This is mostly addressing the concerns over the magazine market that seems to be losing ground, though perhaps it really isn’t in some ways) It is sad that most writers end up moving to novels for monetary reasons. Alas, the number of markets out there is small for short fiction, and declining. I hope the short story doesn’t go the way of the dinosaur; I doubt if it will. There will always be a place for a tightly constructed tale. Most likely e-zines and anthologies will take the place of the magazines as their subscription bases dwindle. The story notes say you wrote “Singletons In Love” for a Lou Anders anthology. What was the inspiration for creating these ‘pods’? What made you think of that as a future possibility where the Internet might not exist? If the human race were to give up computers and hardwired networking, there would still be a need for dense computation. In the world I posit, I assume that computation is taken over by human computers — plurals of humans that use the complexity of their networks to form higher thoughts. I love the idea of the pod: a pod is powerful yet fragile. Pods are hard to form and call fall apart if traumatized. Yet they can make intuitive leaps that normal humans can’t. Many of your stories deal with characters making either bad decisions or ill-informed decisions (“The Teosinthe War” and “Walls of the Universe” for example, one which results in people

World in the Satin Bag

Google Fool’s Day and Some Other Funnies

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Google does it every year, and every year I’m amazing. This year they’ve propose a 100 year mission to establish a colony on mars called Virgle. How do they come up with these ideas? They’re geniuses, that’s how. It’s Google. You can’t go wrong with Google. The other funny is that apparently George W. Bush, our retarded President, and Tony Blair, who is at least only partially retarded, but clearly a genius in comparison to Bush, have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, at least according to the BBC. Now, either this is the most brilliant April Fool’s joke EVER, or someone is really so stupid to think they deserve such a prestigious award. I’m hoping for the former, ’cause it’s funny as all hell. Regularly blogging, writing, reading, etc. will resume by tomorrow and an interview should go up later tonight. Just so you all know. Thanks! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)

World in the Satin Bag

I Have Returned

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This is just a quick note to let everyone know that I have returned safe and sound from cloudy old England. All went well and there will be a more adequate recap later on in the week. Right now I’m unpacking, putting all the stuff I acquired away, etc. For now, I’m just back and alive. Thanks to all the guest bloggers who managed to keep the activity alive around here. I appreciate it you guys! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)

World in the Satin Bag

Guest Post: When Does Fiction Become Unbelievable?

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Firstly, I’m honoured to guest post here, while, ahem, some people get to go away on holiday! 😉 I struggled to think what to post about, and then I saw a film trailer… When does fiction become unbelievable? I haven’t seen 10,000 BC yet, but I gather that the mammoths play a large part in the creation of the Ancient Egyptians’ pyramids. Fine, I’ll accept that: it’s fiction, a ridiculous premise, but it sounds quite fun. A strange alternate history. What still bugs me is that the mammoths gallop at speeds of upwards of 60 kilometres per hour. What?! I can accept that they hung around several tens of thousands longer than in actual reality, but during that time, they also devised some way to motorise themselves?! Perhaps in hundreds of thousands of years worth of evolution, they developed little natural rubber wheels? Nooo. But in SFF, a certain suspension of disbelief is often required. In all imagination, really. We are quite prepared to accept the Chosen One, spoken of in prophecies written on napkins by the Ancient People, but I’ve friends who throw books across the room if a cave is described inadequately. “Hewn from the living rock,” just won’t cut it. It’s often the mundane done wrong that annoys people. Have magic coming from a nameless source, but woe betide you if the smell of a trench (or goblin faeces, etc) isn’t up to scratch. A lot of authors talk of a good story being combined of one element of the mundane, and one element of the fantastical. Brandon Sanderson’s YA novel, Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians or something, has librarians in it — this is obviously quite ordinary. The fantastical element: they’re an evil librarian cult which sacrifices small boys. So, there I was, tied to an alter made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians. As you might imagine, that sort of situation can be quite disturbing. It does funny things to the brain to be in such danger — in fact, it often makes a person pause and reflect upon his life. If you’ve never faced such a situation, then you’ll simply have to take my word. If, on the other hand, you have faced such a situation, then you are probably dead and aren’t likely to be reading this. And it’s a book I really want to read! 🙂 I’m off now; thanks. And yes, Mr. Sanderson, deliver the pimpage-cheque soon 😉 ~ChrisThe Book Swede

World in the Satin Bag

Guest Post: When Can I Call Myself a Writer?

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I used to think of myself as a writer, but not so much anymore. I don’t know when this shift occurred, but I think it’s when I left a career that had “writer” in the title. I graduated from college, more years ago than I’d like to admit, with a degree in Journalism. With that handy-dandy piece of paper I called myself a writer and proceeded to tell anyone who would listen that I was a writer in pursuit of a writing career. And for awhile that worked. I worked at a newspaper as a freelance writer for awhile. But since that was such a poor paying job I ended up in the advertising department selling space to anyone who’d pay our meagre fee. That got old fast and it wasn’t long before I was on the job hunt again. Luckily I landed a job on a TV show as an Associate Producer. Now that was a job with a title that made it sound far grander than it was. Mostly I was a glorified assistant who very occasionally got to write script for some of the on-air segments. For the most part I really liked that job, but I’m afraid I wasn’t good at handling the office politics that cropped up in the Hollywood shark bowl, so I washed out of that job before too long. I could have stayed in Hollywood and continued to give it a go, I even had job offers, but my brief stint convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for that world. As you can see, the further along I got in my career path, the further away I got from my earlier intentions to be a writer. After I returned to Northern California from Hollywood I got a teaching credential because the I needed to do something and without more experience, it was virtually impossible to get work at any of the local TV stations. And as you might expect, teaching elementary school isn’t a career in writing. I’ve since had kids and done the stay-at-home mom thing, which really put the final nails in the coffin of my dead writing career. For years I really didn’t put pen-to-paper (or fingers on a keyboard). I did the job of raising my kids, with hobbies like crochet thrown in for good measure. And then I discovered blogging. Oddly it was the California housing market that opened my eyes to the world of blogging. My husband and I had been wanting to buy a house for what seemed like forever, but housing prices just got crazier and crazier. In my search for information that would explain the insanity I stumbled across a blog about the San Francisco housing market (Patrick.net if you’re interested) and before long I realized what a little community develops among certain blogs. I blogged on that site for about a year before finally thinking, hey, maybe I can do this too… The first blog I set up was very journalistic in nature and I had all kinds of notions that I would rekindle my journalism career through blogging. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for the type of blog I set up. It was way too time intensive for something that didn’t pay. So then I set up my little sci-fi/fantasy blog and lo-and-behold, a small community developed. What was really surprising to me was how many writers I ended up meeting through my blog. I suppose many of us blog because we do have a connection to the written word. I bet there are more aspiring writers among the blogging community than many other cross-sections of society. Or maybe we just like the idea that someone out there might be interested in what we have to say. So a strange thing happened while I was creating a blog. I started to write again. Stewart Sternberg, who authors the blog House of Sternberg, has, in the past, put up “writing assignments” for anyone who chooses to participate. They were usually flash fiction, usually about 1000 words, that could be on any topic. Some would have a suspense theme while others would require us to write from the perspective of an animal. And in a small way, this was a real eye opener for me. I had never really given myself the chance to write that much fiction; I didn’t think I would be that good at it. But a strange thing happened, people told me I wasn’t half bad. Imagine that. But I still hesitate to call myself a writer. I haven’t written the great-American-novel yet and I’m not sure I ever will. I write on my blog(s) mostly and I dabble in fiction when I have the time. A lot of people say that “writers write” and if you’re not writing all the time you can’t consider yourself a proper writer. There should be this overwhelming drive, they say, to write anything, to call yourself a writer. Is this true? Are most writers driven my a uncontrollable urge to write? Is it like the stereotype of the near-crazy writer hunched over his keyboard, tortured over every word, yet still driven to to write? I kind of hope not. I prefer to write in a sane state of mind. Anyway. Maybe I won’t consider myself a proper writer until I write something with some heft to it. But knowing me, I still won’t think it counts until I actually sell it for publication. So what about the other writers out there? Do you have any special criteria for considering yourself a writer?

World in the Satin Bag

Guest Post: Deus Ex Ruins?

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It amazes me how many fantasy worlds have ancient civilizations with far better technology, magic, what-have-you. The Ancient Civilization is a common idea, but it’s not one that always has a lot of logic behind it. Science fiction also has similar ideas (Stargate is a great example, but there are many others). And it’s not just discovering Ancient Civilizations per se; sometimes it’s discovering forgotten technology. Anne McCaffrey’s Pern is a classic example. Many other authors tie their fantasy worlds into something that is actually based in science, where “magic” is old technology that no one understands anymore, and that extra bright star in the sky is actually an old satellite or space ship. Let me ask you something: how many ancient civilizations have we actually discovered remains from who have had technology beyond what we had when we found it? And then what are the odds it would still work? So far, we haven’t seen anything beyond what we already had—at least, that worked. Stonehenge and other mysterious artifacts and structures are around, but we don’t know what they were meant for and we certainly don’t know how to work them as they were intended. You can try and debate tall tales of magical things from the past, but until I see hard proof, I’m going to keep my healthy dose of cynicism. I’m not talking about grading technologies as superior or inferior; I’m looking more at the knowledge base required to provide an artifact that we can discover and use today that supplies something we don’t already know or have the capability to do. On a logical level, people come across major artifacts before they’re ancient, and cultural groups rarely just up and disappear from their homes. If there’s something “cool” around, it’s rare that other people don’t adopt it in some way. Look at all the changes in battle and warfare via weapons and metallurgy in the Mediterranean and Northern Africa way back when. People are inquisitive, and want the advantages that something new can give them. On top of all that, it takes luck and a lot of hard work and research to figure out the past. There are a lot of discoveries that archaeologists have branded as religious or ceremonial simply because they don’t understand what an object was used for. And do we know how the pyramids were built? I sure don’t. There’s an awful lot we don’t know, and an awful lot that we aren’t equipped to find out. The past gets buried over time unless we seek it out. If we’re using archaeological digs to discover information from two or three centuries ago, should we expect that thousands of years won’t cover up ruins? I happen to think that if an Ancient Civilization was that awesome, a writer had better have a good reason for why it collapsed and why no one knows about it. They also need to know why it’s not a pile of dust or buried if it’s still standing thousands of years later. I don’t exactly walk down the street and around the corner to some dilapidated ruins–my city was built on top of them because they were in a good spot. There aren’t magical abandoned cities hanging around with which to produce the odd deus ex machina to solve our moral battles with other societies. We do, however, write stories about them. And we do romanticise them (see also: Donovan’s Atlantis). My question, then, becomes why do we look to the past to provide for the future? What is it that we expect, or more importantly hope, to find? If you don’t know the history you’re doomed to repeat it is an idea that gets drilled in somewhere in junior high. History and our shared past is important. Humans want to know their stories, and people want to get on with things, so to speak. It’s a nice thought that someone out there did all the work for us, and all we have to do is stumble upon the deus ex ruins for a solution.But what does this really say about us?Sara J. normally blogs on Jumpdrives & Cantrips.

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